The peculiarities of carbon fiber reinforced plastic processing by femtosecond laser pulses

Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) is nowadays used in various fields due to its outstanding properties: lightness, strength, ease of forming, resistance to corrosion and aggressive environment, etc. CFRP is already used in various industries: aerospace, automotive, marine, military, etc. However, all those excellent properties of this composite also cause additional problems that are more difficult to solve than when using conventional materials (metal, plastic, glass, etc.). These difficulties are caused by the hardness of carbon fiber itself, the anisotropy of this composite material, where part of the volume is filled with plastic with significantly "weaker" mechanical and thermal properties. Such an inhomogeneous and anisotropic volume of CFRP is difficult to process with traditional mechanical or laser processing methods, the desired processing quality is not achieved, additional operations are required to improve the quality. Using a femtosecond light pulse laser, the process is called "cold" laser processing. The advantages of this processing are minimal HAZ and high processing accuracy. An additional advantage of the femtosecond laser machining process is that by selecting the process parameters, similar ablation rates can be achieved for very different materials within the CFRP volume. In this presentation we are demonstrating: our research methodology to find the most efficient way of CFRP femtosecond processing, the way of investigations of ablation efficiency dependences on process parameters, process optimization possibilities and process modification for desired processing speed gain; the proofs of low/mid average power femtosecond laser equipment applicability in CFRP processing.