Simulation and experimental study of the evolution of shock waves during laser paint removal

Abstract This paper studies the spatiotemporal evolution of shock waves during laser paint removal. In order to study the evolution process of laser-induced plasma shock waves, we developed a laser-plasma shock wave evolution model based on the mass, momentum, and energy conservation theory. The evolution process of laser-induced plasma is studied by simulation and experiment. The simulation and experimental results show that the simulation model can accurately simulate the evolution of the plasma shock wave. In addition, by comparing the ablation depth and paint film thickness, we found that stripping is the primary mechanism of nanosecond pulsed laser paint removal. The ablation is the secondary paint removal mechanism. In summary, this study provides a new way of studying the evolution process of acoustic waves during laser removal paint.