[flotus1]

Hi there CFD experts.

I am trying to simulate the melting and cutting of solid material with a laser beam.

My previous attempts were all based on altering material properties like heat capacity thermal conductivity as functions of temperature. This resulted in some quite exciting animations, but is far apart from any physical behavior.

So what I want to do next is the folowing:
I need to delete specific elements of my finite-volume-representation and move boundary conditions that were attatched to the faces of the element.
For example:



My mesh is actually strictly hexagonal and the direction of the laser beam coincides with the normal vectors of the faces of the elements.
The reason to remove the elements from the mesh is based on the idea that the material, once liquified, is blown away from the part with a stream of nitrogen.
Is there any chance to perform this in fluent?
Or are there other possibilities to simulate the laser passing through the material?

I know that there are about a trillion physical effects which are neglected by the model i proposed, it is just the start for a series of modeling refinements.

[flotus1]

All right since there seem to be no experts in mesh manipulation, here is my new idea:

Instead of deleting the volume from the mesh, would it be possible to give it some kind of transmissivity from one of the radiation models?

In this case, what would be the appropriate boundary condition to simulate the laser beam at the top of the domain?

I would be very pleased is someone could share his experience with me.

[flotus1]

Still no suggestions?