Heat Transfer and Thermal Deformation Characteristics of Liquid-Cooled Laser Mirror

Abstract

A coupled finite volume-element method is developed to simulate the transient thermal deformation of water-cooled mirror by considering fluid flow and convective heat transfer. The simulation process consists of two steps: the 3D finite volume models of fluid flow and heat transfer equation are solved to obtain the time-dependent temperature field by using CFD; then, the obtained temperature field used as final temperature field is unidirectionally coupled to the finite element model for solving the thermoplastic equation. It is concluded that fluid flow not only affects the magnitude of temperature rise and thermal deformation, but also affects the distribution of temperature and thermal deformation. The temperature gradient in the thickness direction ( z direction) is found to be much larger than that in transverse direction. It is found that the temperature and the consequent deformation of water-cooled mirror increase significantly in the first seconds and gradually become steady state in the subsequent time. Experiments are conducted to estimate the precision of numerical models, and the experimental results agree well with the simulated results.