Experimental study on propulsive performance of typical metal ablated by nanosecond pulse width laser

In order to study the laser ablation propulsion performance of different metal materials, an Nd:YAG laser with a wavelength of 1064 nm and a pulse width of 8 ns was used to ablate seven common metal materials: Al, Fe, Ni, Cu, Y, Ag and Au in the atmosphere. Propulsion performance parameters such as ablation mass, impulse, impulse coupling coefficient, specific impulse and energy conversion efficiency were measured, and the influence law of laser power density on propulsion performance was obtained. The experimental results show that under the same laser power density, the ablation amount of Fe is the largest, the ablation amount of Y is the smallest. The impulse of Al, Au and Cu is larger, while that of Ag is the least. Au's impulse coupling coefficient and specific impulse mean value are the largest among the seven metals, reaching the maximum value of 40.7 μN/W and 500 s when the laser power density is 1.72 \times 10^10\;\rmW/\rmc\rmm^2 and 2.98 \times 10^10\;\rmW/\rmc\rmm^2, respectively. The average energy conversion efficiency can reach 6%.