Abstract
In steam laser cleaning, a thin water film layer, formed by the condensation of steam, on the substrate surface is used as an energy transfer medium to effectively remove particulate contaminants from the substrate surface. In this work, a new method is adopted for water film formation. Instead of steam condensation, the water film is now formed by condensation of ambient water vapour, a more uniform water film results and this new method would simplify the experimental setup of steam laser cleaning. Using this new method of water film formation and a pulsed 532 nm Nd:YAG laser (pulse width of similar to 70 ns at a pulse repetition rate of 5 kHz), the dependence of cleaning efficiency on processing parameters, such as laser fluence, pulse number/unit area, and temperature, are investigated and cleaning efficiency will be compared to that of dry and steam laser cleaning.