Wet Laser Cleaning of Paint Layers from the Surface of a Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP)

By monitoring the surface temperature of a carbon fibre reinforced poly-mer (CFRP) sample, we designed a wet laser cleaning method to success-fully remove the paint and surface epoxy resin layer without damaging the CFRP substrate. The temperature and stress distributions at the inter-face between the epoxy resin and CFRP were simulated by the heat con-duction equation. The variation trend of temperature and stress with the average laser power was obtained and the cleaning threshold was given. A 1064 nm acoustic-optical Q-switched laser was used for cleaning by scanning the painted CFRP sample at a certain speed with different laser powers and the cleaning effect was monitored by measuring the tempera-ture in real-time. The cleaning mechanism in the wet laser cleaning of CFRP is indicated to be the thermal stress stripping mechanism.