Abstract

Femtosecond lasers have transformed high precision laser manufacturing over the last three decades. Their short pulse duration and associated high peak power allow for micro-machining of any material with high accuracy, small feature size and limited thermal effects. Most current applications require micron-size accuracy over small areas, typically a few square millimeters. A single femtosecond pulse will remove with a very high precision a tiny amount of material, leading to fairly limited ablation efficiency, on the order of a few cubic millimeters/minutes in most cases. Increasing the ablation efficiency would therefore allow for a greater processed volume in the same amount of time. Even if some alternative options, such as GHz processing, are now being actively explored, the main route to increase the ablation efficiency remains an increase in the laser average power. The growing availability of high average power femtosecond lasers, as well as progress in beam engineering and application development means that we are at the edge of a new step in the development of ultrafast laser processing.

We report on new developments aimed at improving plane wings aerodynamics by femtosecond laser micro-texturing. The creation or riblets, which are grooves engraved in the direction of air flow, can lead to a reduction of up to 9% in fuel consumption and contaminants emission. Riblets have a small feature size: The pitch and height of the groove is typically on the order of a few tens of micrometers. We present texturing tests that demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed technique.

Full-text article not available; see video presentation

© 2023 The Author(s)