Modeling of laser cutting and drilling

This paper describes a possibility of mathematical modeling of laser applications, especially laser cutting and drilling and its use in practice. In the first part of this contribution there is a very briefly description of contemporary use of high-power lasers in industry and also basic principles of interaction between laser beam and treated material. Next part of the paper deals with a mathematical modeling of temperature field. Two numerical methods are used for the calculation of the temperature field: the finite difference method and the finite element method. Two examples of results of these both methods are demonstrated and some problems occurring when creating the matheniatical models are described. In the conclusion we made a brief comparison between theoretical and experimental results.