Hole Drilling of High Density Polyethylene using Nd:YAG Pulsed Laser

Abstract

This paper presents the theoretical and experimental results of drilling high density
polyethylene sheet with thickness of 1 mm using millisecond Nd:YAG pulsed laser. Effects of laser
parameters including laser energy, pulse duration and peak power were investigated. To describe and
understand the mechanism of the drilling process Comsol multiphysics package version 4.3b was used to
simulate the process. Both of the computational and experimental results indicated that the drilling
process has been carried out successfully and there are two phases introduced in the drilling process,
vaporization and melting. Each portion of these phases depend on the laser parameters used in the
drilling process