Numerical control of laser processing and simulation of microstructures and temperature profiles - a fuzzy approach

Abstract

The use of high power density laser beam for surface modification of many important alloys often leads to appreciable changes in the composition & tribological properties. These changes are dependent on process variables such as beam size, energy, scan rate, laser mode and the Chemistry and metallurgy of steel. Appro-ximate solutions to heat flow equations are combined with kinetic models to predict the microstructures and temperature distributions. A transient fuzzy logic based heat flow model is developed to predict temperature zones instead of discrete temperature calculations. A set of separate membership functions are formulated for dete-rmining temperature zones by means of continuous iteration process the same method is adopted to evaluate micro-structures for a specific temperature zone by incorporat-ing the kinetic and thermal datas available. Alloy steel of CK45 grade and stainless steel of 316 grade are used for this investigations and the results obtained are compared with the temperature profiles obtained from conventional methods and hence their microstructures. An attempt is also made to compute the dendrite cell width distribution during laser melt solidification of 316 LN steel by means of the above mentioned method.