Abstract
In recent years, concern has been raised about the technique of controlling electrical breakdown by using laser in many fields. Especially, laser has attracted much attention in the Electro-Discharge Macining(EDM) because of its many merits. Therefore, this research has been performed to obtain fundamental data relevant to discharge processing by using a pulsed Nd:YAG laser. The experiments of laser-guided dc discharge by laser radiation have been carried out at low air pressure ranging from 0.2 to 20 torr. The minimum laser-guided dc discharge voltage V\ulcorner at the given pressures P and distances D between an anode and a cathode was measured. It is found that the minimum laser-guided dc discharge voltage is much lower than the natural discharge voltage V\ulcorner\ulcorner, and the values of V\ulcorner and V\ulcorner as a function of P.D has a similar tendency. The laser output energy Eout decreases with input pulse duration tp increasing, and the more the value of tp increases, the higher that of V\ulcorner is obtained because the number of photons during the discharge time N decreases with t\ulcorner increasing. There is the time lag frequently when the discharge by laser radiation is misguided under the condition of the applied voltage less than V_G.min.
