The stress relief mechanism in laser irradiating on porous films

Stress relief effect is believed to be the main reason why the porous structure films have high laser induced damage threshold. But there is little systematic theoretical investigation of this view. This essay adopts spherical coordinate model to calculate the temperature and stress distribution in the film and analyzes the local stress redistribution after phase transformation or crush happens. The influences of porosity and pore radius on stress redistribution have been studied. The results show that: for the case of only local crush occurrence, the changes of porosity and pore radius have little influence on the stress relief effect. For the films with low porosity, the formed thermal stress cannot be alleviated effectively. When local phase transformation happens, the permeation action of high pressure fluid can reduce the local high pressure in the phase transformation zone; on the other hand, it can make the high pressure fluid permeate to film's surface and cause surface tensile stress increase. The final effect is the competitive result of these two mechanisms. Overall, when the permeation action of phase transformation materials happens, the higher porosity or larger pore radius, the higher capability of films to resist laser damage.