Computational Study of Impingement Characteristics of Assist Gas from Coaxial/Off-axis Nozzles in Laser Machining

A computational study was carried out to analyze the characteristics of supersonic (Mach 2.0) coaxial/off-axis jet's impingements on a slanted kerf surface in laser machining. The effects of various parameters such as gas pressure, distance between nozzle exit and kerf edge surface, and application of off-axis nozzles on the impingement phenomena of the assist-gas on kerf surface were observed. The present study showed that simply increasing the assist-gas pressure for coaxial supersonic nozzle was not effective to alleviate the strength of flow separation on kerf surface. It also presented the optimized operating condition of the coaxial nozzle to have the highest skin friction values over kerf surface.