Optics & Laser Technology 87 (2017) 87–93

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Optics & Laser Technology

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Full length article

Fibre laser cutting stainless steel: Fluid dynamics and cut front
morphology
Jetro Pocorni a,n, John Powell a,c, Eckard Deichsel b, Jan Frostevarg a, Alexander F.H. Kaplan a
a
Department of Engineering Sciences and Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology, 97187 Luleå, Sweden
b
Bystronic Laser AG, Industriestrasse 21, CH-3362 Niederönz, Switzerland
c
Laser Expertise Ltd., Acorn Park Industrial Estate, Harrimans Lane, Nottingham NG7 2TR, U.K

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper the morphology of the laser cut front generated by fibre lasers was investigated by ob-
Received 9 March 2016 servation of the ‘frozen’ cut front, additionally high speed imaging (HSI) was employed to study the fluid
Accepted 8 August 2016 dynamics on the cut front while cutting. During laser cutting the morphology and flow properties of the
Available online 16 August 2016
melt film on the cut front affect cut quality parameters such as cut edge roughness and dross (residual
Keywords: melt attached to the bottom of the cut edge). HSI observation of melt flow down a laser cutting front
Laser cutting using standard cutting parameters is experimentally problematic because the cut front is narrow and
Fibre laser surrounded by the kerf walls. To compensate for this, artificial parameters are usually chosen to obtain
Melt flow wide cut fronts which are unrepresentative of the actual industrial process. This paper presents a new
Particle tracking velocimetry
experimental cutting geometry which permits HSI of the laser cut front using standard, commercial
High speed imaging
parameters. These results suggest that the cut front produced when cutting medium section (10 mm
thick) stainless steel with a fibre laser and a nitrogen assist gas is covered in humps which themselves are
covered by a thin layer of liquid. HSI observation and theoretical analysis reveal that under these con-
ditions the humps move down the cut front at an average speed of approximately 0.4 m/s while the
covering liquid flows at an average speed of approximately 1.1 m/s, with an average melt depth at the
bottom of the cut zone of approximately 0.17 mm.
& 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Laser cutting is a well-established industrial process and has
now become a multibillion euro industry. A wide range of mate-
rials can be processed by laser cutting, from polymeric materials
(Choudhury et al. [1]) to tool steels (Scintilla et al. [2]) and Nickel
super alloys (Hasçalık et al. [3]). In depth research into the details
of the process is continuing to optimise cutting speeds and cut
edge quality.
In laser fusion cutting of metals a volume of melt is created (by
absorption of the laser beam) and then blown out of the cut zone
by an inert assist gas. During the process a thin layer of melt flows
down the cut front, as shown in Fig. 1.
The importance of understanding the melt flow on the cut front
is discussed by Tani [5] who states that both the amount of dross
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: Jetro.Pocorni@ltu.se (J. Pocorni),
John.Powell@laserexp.co.uk (J. Powell),
Eckard.Deichsel@bystronic.com (E. Deichsel), Jan.Frostevarg@ltu.se (J. Frostevarg),
Alexander.Kaplan@ltu.se (A.F.H. Kaplan).
at the bottom of the kerf and the cut edge surface roughness de-
pend on the melt film condition throughout the kerf. Schulz et al.
[6] have also pointed out that dross formation is related to prop-
erties of the melt such as its thickness and velocity.
The importance of the melt film characteristics on the cut front
is also emphasised by Chen and Yao [7] who conclude that fluc-
tuations in the absorbed laser power and the velocity of the high
speed gas jet can create perturbations in the melt film which in
turn could give rise to fluctuating striation patterns on the cut
edge. Dross and surface roughness are, of course, important be-
cause they are two of the main quality parameters in laser cutting
(Rajaram et al. [8] and Ghany et al. [9]). An increase in cut edge
roughness has been noted by both Himmer et al. [10] and Purto-
nen et al. [11] when fibre lasers are used to profile metals of 6 mm
thickness and higher. Petring et al. [12,13] have also studied melt
flow and kerf morphology and have explained that the decrease in
cut edge quality for fibre lasers is primarily due to multiple re-
flections of the laser beam against the kerf walls.
High speed imaging has been used in the past to investigate the
hydrodynamics of the melt layer (Arata et al. [14,15]) and striation
formation (Zefferer [16]). Previous work on HSI of the cut front has

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optlastec.2016.08.002
0030-3992/& 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
88 J. Pocorni et al. / Optics & Laser Technology 87 (2017) 87–93

Fig. 1. The laser cutting process (Powell [4]).

Fig. 3. (a) The HSI set-up and (b) a single frame from the HSI film showing bright
spots on the cut front.

when using standard cutting parameters and cutting conditions (a

narrow cut front surrounded by the recently cut walls of the kerf).
Laser cutting of steels can be divided into two main subjects i.e.
laser fusion cutting of stainless steel (usually with nitrogen assist
gas) and laser oxygen cutting of mild steel with oxygen gas assist.
In both cases the assist gas is used as a source of mechanical en-
ergy to blow away the melt in the kerf. In laser oxygen cutting the
oxygen assist gas also functions as a source of heat since the
Fig. 2. HSI experimental setup. (f.p. indicates camera focal point.). oxygen undergoes an exothermic reaction with the iron in mild
steel. However, the gas pressures used in the two techniques are
Table 1 markedly different. Oxygen pressures tend to be less than 2 bar
Cutting and laser beam parameters used. and nitrogen pressures are usually in excess of 10 bar. Although
oxygen was used to cut both mild and stainless steels in the early
Parameters Values
days of laser cutting (Powell [20]) only high pressure nitrogen is
Thickness 10 mm employed to cut stainless steels nowadays. This paper concerns
Cutting speed 1.8 m/min the flow conditions in the kerf during laser cutting of stainless
Laser power 6000 W steel with nitrogen assist gas.
Focal position
12 mm
Gas type N2
Gas pressure 16 bar
1.1. Melt flow in laser fusion cutting
Nozzle diameter 3.5 mm
Nozzle standoff distance 0.8 mm Wandera and Kujanpaa [21] modelled the melt film velocity
Fibre diameter 100 mm and corresponding melt thickness and compared this with an
Focusing lens-focus distance 200 mm
experimentally determined position at which the flow inside the
Collimation lens-collimation distance 100 mm
Beam focus diameter 200 mm cut front becomes turbulent (the so called boundary layer point)
for 10 mm stainless steel with a cutting speed of 1 m/min and
5 kW fibre laser. They suggested a melt velocity between 1400 and
been performed either by using unrealistic cut parameters to ob- 2200 m/s with a melt thicknesses of 0.2–0.4 mm for a nitrogen gas
tain wide kerfs for camera viewing (Hirano and Fabbro [17]) or by pressure between 16–18 bar and kerf width between 600–800 mm.
replacing one wall of the cut kerf with a transparent plate and Hirano and Fabbro [17] investigated the hydrodynamics of the
then filming the cut front from the side (Ermolaev et al. [18]). melt layer in laser cutting 3 mm thick mild steel with nitrogen
Others such as Riveiro et al. [19] used transparent silica glass assist gas by using a HSI camera. They found a melt velocity of
(which strongly absorbs CO2 radiation) as a work piece. They then 3.2 m/s while the velocity of the observed humps was 0.2 m/s.
filmed the cut front from the side through the glass. It is clearly of They explain that the difference in velocity is due to the fact that
interest to observe the melt flow down a metal laser cutting front the evolution of the hump is not due to a mass flow but due to a
 J. Pocorni et al. / Optics & Laser Technology 87 (2017) 87–93
Fig. 4. Two different ways of working out the mass flow rate out of the cut zone by
(a) kerf removal rate, Kr in Eq. (1) and (b) liquid flow rate Lr in Eq. (2).
phase evolution. Both Golubdev [22] and Hirano and Fabbro [17]
describe humps as melt accumulations which rest on top of so
called ‘shelves’. These shelves have been shown to slide down the
cut front by Hirano and Fabbro [17]. However, Hirano and Fabbro
[17] performed their experiments with parameters which are very
different from the ones used in actual laser cutting. They used a
focus spot diameter of 1.7 mm (industry standard 0.2–1.0 mm) and
a cutting gas pressure of 2.5 bar (industry standard 10–16 bar).
Ermolaev et al. [18] filmed the cut front from the side via a
transparent plate with a high speed camera to study the melt flow,
89
Fig. 5. Velocity of a number of droplets in the first 1 mm of their flight out of the
bottom of the kerf.
liquid removal and striation formation. They found that for CO2
laser cutting there exists a well-developed coherent stream of li-
quid, while for fibre laser cutting the melt flow is highly unstable
with multiple melt ejections from the cut front to the side walls.
Kaplan [23] has calculated a melt thickness of 20 mm and melt
velocity of 7 m/s for a 3 mm mild steel plate and CO2 laser cutting
with nitrogen assist gas. He concluded that the melt film thickness
increases with increasing processing speed due to increased
melting rate and the stagnation pressure of the cutting gas.
Thermodynamic and fluid dynamic conditions within the cut
zone vary according to what material is being cut, the cutting
speed, the type of laser being used, and how thick the material is.
At the high speeds associated with thin sections (0.1–2.0 mm) the
temperatures in the cut zone are much higher than when cutting
thicker sections, and evaporation can play a major part in the
material removal process (Petring et al. [13]). At higher sections
the reduced cutting speeds and associated lower cut front tem-
peratures mean that the amount of mass removed by evaporation
is negligible (Powell et al. [24]). However, in the case of fibre laser
cutting evaporation can play a role in propelling the melt down
the cut front.
In this paper HSI is used to investigate the flow conditions
within the cut zone for 10 mm thick stainless steel cut by fibre
laser, also for the first time a new experimental cutting geometry
has been introduced, which enables HSI of the laser cut front
produced using standard cutting parameters and kerf widths ra-
ther than the exaggerated cut widths and unrealistic cutting gas
pressures employed by earlier researchers (Hirano and Fabbro
[17]).
The purpose of this study is to analyse the flow conditions in
the cut zone and the morphology of the laser cut front created by
fibre lasers, and to study their effect on laser cut quality as com-
pared to CO2 laser cutting. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
was used to observe the ‘frozen’ cut front and high speed imaging
was employed to study the movement of the melt on the cut front
while cutting.
2. Material and methods
The observation of melt flow down a laser cutting front using
standard cutting parameters is experimentally rather difficult be-
cause the cut front is narrow and surrounded by the recently cut
90 J. Pocorni et al. / Optics & Laser Technology 87 (2017) 87–93
Fig. 6. (a) Three frames from the HSI film showing the movement of a bright spot down the cut front; frame rate 4000 frames per second and 0.25 ms time steps between
frames; (b) velocity measurements of bright spots as they move down the kerf.
walls of the kerf (Arai [25]). For this reason most studies of the cut
front either use artificial parameters to produce a possibly un-
representative wide cut front (Hirano and Fabbro [17]), or involve
cuts started at the edge of the sheet– where the cut front is most
visible. This latter approach can also give misleading results be-
cause the cut front is, at this point, in its ‘start up’ phase rather
than its eventual quasi-steady state.
To overcome these problems a new experimental technique,
called triangle drop out, has been developed which allows the HSI
camera a view of the well-established quasi steady state cut front.
This involves using the laser to produce a cut path which results in
the sudden falling away of a triangular cut part to expose the
cutting front in action.
The cutting path used is explained in Fig. 2. First the laser cuts
along line 1, then returns to the edge of the material and cuts to
the intersection along line 2 (without stopping at the intersection).
As the laser reaches the intersection the triangle enclosed by lines
1 and 2 and the edge of the material falls away – revealing the
steady state cut front as it continues to cut line 2. The HSI camera
is focused on the intersection and true images of the fluid flow in
the cut zone can be obtained.
Table 1 shows the cutting parameters and laser beam condi-
tions used in this experiment. The material used was 10 mm
stainless steel AISI 304 (EN 1.4301). The laser used was a Bystronic
BySprint Fibre 3015 with a Fibre 6000 resonator and HK35 nozzle.
A Redlake NR4-S2 high speed camera was used with following
setup parameters:
 Frame rate of 4000 frames per second with spatial resolution of
512  496 pixels.
 105 mm Micro-Nikkor lens with focal ratio f/4.
 Band pass filter which blocks process light and matches the il-
lumination wavelength, as described by Frostevarg [26].
 Illumination laser: Cavilux HF diode illumination laser with
810 nm wavelength.
Analysis of the cut front is based upon the empirical photo-
graphic evidence collected. Particle tracking velocimetry (PTV)
was employed to measure the velocity of bright patches on the
melt surface as they flow towards the bottom of the kerf. This
technique has previously been applied by Roth et al. [27] to the
analysis of particle movement in fluid jets in abrasive water jet
cutting. PTV determines the velocity of individual particles in
flows and is based on the Lagrangian reference frame, which ob-
serves fluid motion by tracking an individual feature as it moves
through space and time. The algorithm first isolates individual
features on the cut front in each frame of the high speed video. In
order to find valid correspondences between features in different
frames the temporal matching problem was solved with cross-
correlation algorithms, relaxation algorithms or a combination of
both as described in Brevis [28].
3. Results and discussion
Fig. 3 shows a schematic of the set up for high speed imaging
 J. Pocorni et al. / Optics & Laser Technology 87 (2017) 87–93
Fig. 7. The morphology of the cut front (longitudinal cross section).
and makes two important points:
1. The melt surface is not necessarily flat.
2. The melt flow rate is faster towards the melt surface and slower
towards the melt/solid interface.
Fig. 4 shows diagrammatically that there are two entirely in-
dependent ways of working out the mass flow rate out of the cut
zone. The first of these can be called the kerf removal rate and is
simply calculated from the kerf width, the material thickness and
the cutting speed, as in Eq. (1):
Kr = W ⋅d⋅V ⋅ρ
where Kr is the kerf removal rate (g/s), W is the average kerf width
(mm), d is the material thickness (mm), V is the cutting speed
(mm/s) and ρ is the material density (g/mm3).
Eq. (1) is, of course, only valid for cutting speeds that; a. enable
sufficient heat input into the material for cutting to occur, and b.
are low enough for vaporisation to be ignored as a mass transport
mechanism. Pocorni et al. [29] have pointed out that the max-
imum temperature in the cut zone is proportional to cutting
speed. As the current work does not involve cutting of thin section
material at very high speeds, mass loss as a result of vaporisation
is minimal and can be left out of the mass balance.
The second method of working out the mass flow rate out of
the cut zone involves working out the liquid flow rate out of the
bottom of the kerf. For this the fluid stream cross section ((π/2) x
kerf width x average melt depth) and the average melt flow speed
of the stream (umelt) are needed (see Fig. 4(b)).
91
π
Lr = ⋅W ⋅t⋅umelt ⋅ρ
2 (2)
where Lr is the liquid flow rate (g/s), t is the average melt depth
(mm) and umelt is the average melt flow velocity (mm/s).
Clearly the kerf removal rate must equal the liquid flow rate:
L r = Kr (3)
Removing factors common to Eqs. (1) and (2):
π
⋅t⋅umelt = d⋅V
2 (4)
In this case d equals 10 mm and V equals 30 mm/s, so the ex-
pression in Eq. (4) becomes t⋅umelt ¼191 mm2/s.
To find the average thickness t of the melt layer, the average
melt velocity umelt needs to be known. This can be measured di-
rectly by HSI of the droplets of melt as they leave the bottom of the
cut zone. In the first 1 mm of flight the velocity of any particle will
be close to the flow rate of the stream it was separated from. As
there is a substantial velocity gradient within the melt stream a
range of particle velocities could be expected. This range can
clearly be seen in Fig. 5. The average flow rate was 1.1 m/s with a
velocity range between 0.5 and 2.2 m/s. From Eq. (4) this gives a
melt depth at the bottom of the kerf of approximately 0.17 mm.
This value seems appropriate to the process geometry and the
generation of particles of resolidified melt with diameters of tens
of microns which are typical of the process. These results suggest
that the theoretical predictions of Wandera and Kujanpaa [21]
(melt speed 1400–2200 m/s with a melt thicknesses of 0.2–0.4 mm)
are incorrect. Also, melt depths as small as those suggested by
Wandera and Kujanpaa [21] would require very high cut front
temperatures and a process dominated by boiling rather than the
molten droplet removal. Hirano and Fabbro [17], on the other
hand, observed a melt surface velocity of approximately 3.2 m/s
which is surprisingly close to our result, bearing in mind that they
used completely different process parameters.
HSI as shown in Fig. 6(a) was also used to measure the
downward velocity of bright spots observed on the liquid surface.
In the following, the bright spot velocity shown in Fig. 6(b) is
compared to the droplet velocity from Fig. 5.
The bright spots had a velocity profile shown in Fig. 6(b) which
gives them an average velocity of approximately 0.4 m/s. This is in
agreement with the findings of Hirano and Fabbro [17] who found
a hump velocity of 0.2 m/s. If the bright spots were correlated with
the surface velocity of the melt, values between 1.5 and 2.0 m/s
should be expected (i.e. assuming the velocity of the melt surface
would equal the highest values noted in Fig. 5).
It can therefore be assumed that the bright spot velocities given
(1) in Fig. 6(b) are related to a feature of the flow which is not the
surface flow velocity. It seems probable that the bright spots in the
HSI video correlate with humps on the liquid-solid interface which
are eroded by a combination of hot fluid flow and enhanced laser
beam absorption, so that they move down the cut front. Fig. 7
presents a schematic cross-sectional view of this.
The existence of moving humps on the fibre laser cutting front
is supported by SEM images of the cross sections of the solidified
cut front shown in Fig. 8. In Fig. 8(a) and (b) a hump can be clearly
seen in the liquid layer and the underlying solid substrate. A ty-
pical CO2 cut front cross section (as shown in Fig. 8(c) and (d))
shows a more uniform flow of melt over a relatively flat solid/li-
quid interface.
It is clear from Fig. 8 that there are fundamental differences in
the cut front geometry between CO2 and fibre lasers. Both the
melt/solid and the liquid/gas interfaces are smoother when a CO2
laser is used instead of a fibre laser. Hirano and Fabbro [17] have
postulated that the humps on the surface of the melt on a fibre
92 J. Pocorni et al. / Optics & Laser Technology 87 (2017) 87–93
Fig. 8. SEM images of cross sections of the cut front obtained with (a) and (b) Fibre laser: humps are present in both the liquid layer and the underlying solid, (c) and (d) CO2
laser: uniform structure of resolidified melt over flatter solid/liquid interface.
laser cut front drive the melt ejection process in an intermittent
manner and this is in agreement with the findings of Ermolaev
et al. [18] that CO2 laser cutting involves a coherent flow of liquid
down the cut front, whereas during fibre laser cutting the melt
flow is highly unstable. The natural consequence of this unstable
flow is the reduction in cut edge smoothness which has been
shown by both Himmer et al. [10] and Purtonen et al. [11] when
fibre lasers are used to profile metals of 6 mm thickness and
higher.
4. Conclusions
(1) The results presented in this paper suggest that the cut front
produced when cutting stainless steel with a fibre laser and a
nitrogen assist gas is covered in slow moving humps which
themselves are covered by a thin layer of faster moving liquid.
(2) Under the standard cutting conditions used in this case it has
been found that the humps move down the cut front at an
average speed of approximately 0.4 m/s while the liquid flows
at an average speed of approximately 1.1 m/s. The average
melt depth at the bottom of the cut zone has been estimated
to be approximately 0.17 mm.
(3) The results obtained in this work required a new experimental
technique (triangle drop out) which allowed HSI observation
of cuts produced under standard cutting conditions.
(4) The results here indicate that the decrease in cut edge quality,
when processing thicker section steel with fibre lasers, could
be a consequence of sporadic hump generation (as opposed to
smooth flow) in addition to multiple reflections of the laser
beam inside the cut kerf.
Acknowledgements
The support of this work by the European Commission through
the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) within the HALO project
(Grant Agreement Number 314410) is gratefully acknowledged.
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steels, J. Manuf. Sci. Eng. 138 (2015) 031012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/
1.4031190.
Jetro Pocorni is a Ph.D. student at Luleå University of
Technology in Sweden and is currently a guest re-
searcher at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science
and Technology). His research focusses on laser cutting
and high speed imaging observation techniques of the
laser cutting process. He obtained his Master of Science
(M.Sc.) degree in mechanical engineering at the Uni-
versity of Twente in the Netherlands. During his master
thesis Jetro studied real-time process monitoring and
control of laser welding by using a spectrometer.