Acceleration characteristics of flyers driven by pulsed laser beams

The acceleration characteristics of flyers are critical parameters for laser-driven flyer study. In this paper, a laser-driven flyer experiment was designed. The PVDF piezoelectric film sensor was employed to measure the flight time of flyers traveling different distances, also flyer velocity and acceleration were calculated. The effects of laser energy on flyer acceleration performances were analyzed. Based on the Gurney energy theory, a calculation model of laser-driven flyer velocity was established. According to experimental results, laser energy loss and effective absorption coefficient were determined, and the effects of laser energy and metal film thickness on flyer velocity were obtained. The results show that the acceleration characteristics of flyers driven by different laser energies are similar. Moreover, laser energy has little influence on acceleration time. At high laser energy, the influences of metal film thickness on flyer maximum velocity and coupling coefficient are obvious. When the metal film is thicker than a certain value, the coupling coefficient could not increase again.