Laser cleaning performance and mechanism in stripping of Polyacrylate resin paint

Laser cleaning is a high-efficient, newly emerging and environmentally friendly technology. Removing paint from aircraft skin is an important application of this technology. This paper describes how a high repetition frequency fiber laser of 1064 nm was used to remove the 50-μm-thick polyacrylic resin primer paint layer on an aircraft skin (LY12 aluminum alloy plate). Experiments were conducted to study the cleaning performance by varying process parameters such as scanning speed, pulse frequency, scanning line interval and laser power. This paper found that the quality and efficiency could be improved by selecting the appropriate combination of scanning speed and pulse frequency. The amount of paint stripped by the single pulsed laser increased with an increase in laser power. By analyzing the cleaned surface and the particles collected from the process, we propose three different kinds of possible stripping mechanisms: combustion reaction, thermal stress vibration effect and plasma shock effect.