Moving Laser Beam
 

I want to simulate the thermal effect of a laser beam(which is moving) on a multiphase surface.
I would appreciate if anyone has ideas about the way(s) i can simulate the moving laser beam.(In Ansys and/or Star-CCM+and/or OpenFOAM)

Thank you in advance.

So is it simply a moving heat source? This is easy to implement in just about any CFD code.

Thank you for you reply.

Before going to the multiphase case,I tried to do a sample Solid case,by defining a table with the moving heat flux according to time.

a) Im not sure it will be the correct way to set a defined heat flux to the fixed coordinates in multiphase case.

b) Making a table to simulate the moving heat flux, somehow is time consuming.Because i should change the heat flux in each coordinates and each time step.(Below is a sample version of table i've used)

x y z t(1s) t(2s) t(3s) ...
1 0 0 500 0 0
2 0 0 0 500 0
3 0 0 0 0 500
.
.
.

Do you have any idea or suggestion about 'a' and 'b' ?
Thank you in advance.

CEL expressions can do a lot!

I used the following expression on a heat source:

(max(z-Z1,0[m])/abs(z-Z1))*-35000 [W m^-3]

Where Z1 = 5 [m]

So while z < Z1, the heat source = 0.
If z > Z1 then heat source = -35000 [W m^-3]

Maybe you can do the same with coordinates and time.