Absorption

File Column Reference

The energy absorption data is written to the absorbedEnergy.dat file.

#time,s

Time elapsed since the beginning of the simulation, in seconds.

The following fields show energy gained during the set period of time. The period of time is defined by the config.IterationSubstepsRate field in the JSON file. The values are units of energy are Watts * IterationSubstepsRate.

EmissionTotalPower

Total power emitted by the energy source. For example, if the beam power \(P\) is constant, and is defined in the ScanStrategy.Beam.Power parameter (W) in the JSON file, the EmissionTotalPower is equal to \(PT\), where T is config.IterationSubstepsRate: the number of time steps between simulation outputs.

TotalPowerFluid

Power absorbed in the fluid phase.

TotalPowerSolid

Power absorbed in the solid phase.

BeamPowerFluid

Beam power absorbed in the fluid phase.

BeamPowerSolid

Beam power absorbed in the fluid phase.

The following fields show energy lost during the set period of time. The values are negative, to show that the energy is lost.

EvaporationPower

Energy lost through evaporation.

RadiationPower

Energy lost through black-body radiation.

ConvectionPower

Energy lost through gas convection in the chamber.

PowerLostBottom

Energy which is not caught by the material.

The energy balance treats the PowerLostBottom as the energy absorbed by the material:

\[\begin{split}&\texttt{TotalPowerFluid} + \texttt{TotalPowerSolid} \approx \\ \texttt{BeamPowerFluid} + &\texttt{BeamPowerSolid} + \texttt{EvaporationPower} + \texttt{RadiationPower} + \texttt{ConvectionPower}\end{split}\]

Energy Absorption Percentage

To find the ratio of the absorbed energy, take the sum of the BeamPowerFluid and BeamPowerSolid columns, divide by the total laser power \(P\) (the ScanStrategy.Beam.Power parameter in the JSON file), and divide by the time the power was being recorded \(T\) (the config.IterationSubstepsRate field in the JSON file).

\[\frac{\texttt{BeamPowerFluid}+\texttt{BeamPowerSolid}} {TP}\]

If the beam power is variable, which can be set by using the XYpositions scanning strategy, the expression should use the EmissionTotalPower column of the absorbedEnergy.dat file:

\[\frac{\texttt{BeamPowerFluid}+\texttt{BeamPowerSolid}} {\texttt{EmissionTotalPower}}\]