Effect of thermal stresses on chip-free diode laser cutting of glass

In laser cleaving of brittle materials using controlled fracture technique, thermal stresses are used to induce a crack and the material is separated along the cutting path by extending this crack. In this study, a glass sheet is stressed thermally using a 808-940 nm diode laser radiation. One of the problems in laser cutting of glass with controlled fracture technique is the cut deviation at the leading and the trailing edges of the glass sheet. In order to avoid this damage it is necessary to understand the stress distributions which control crack propagation. A study is conducted here to analyse the cut deviation problem of glass by examining the stress fields during diode laser cutting of soda-lime glass sheets. Optical microscope photographs of the breaking surface are obtained to examine the surface quality and cut path deviation while the latter is explained from the results of the stress fields which are obtained from a finite element simulation. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.