Comparative Evaluation of High-Order CFD Schemes for Modeling Nanosecond Laser Ablation and Shockwave Dynamics

Laser ablation of metals involves coupled physical phenomena occurring over nanosecond (ns) and microsecond time scales, including laser energy absorption, rapid heating, material vaporization, plasma formation, and shockwave propagation. Effectively capturing these interactions accurately and efficiently requires numerical methods that resolve steep gradients, phase transitions, and compressible flow phenomena over small time scales. This work highlights the development of a computational structure that models the full ns-laser ablation process using and evaluating high-order computational fluid dynamics (CFD) schemes. Experimental work has examined ns-laser ablation of metals, mainly aluminum in an argon atmosphere. Numerical models have also been examined, but few studies have systematically compared their performance. This study addresses that gap by solving the Euler equations with appropriate equations of state using Total Variation Diminishing, Weighted Essentially Non-Oscillatory spatial schemes, paired with Runge-Kutta time integration and OpenFOAM's rhoCentralFoam solver. This study aims to identify the optimal CFD strategies for modeling full-cycle nanosecond laser ablation physics with improved accuracy to cost-performance for engineering and research applications.