To improve the laser-induced damage resistance of 7075 aluminum alloy, a typical aerospace material, a laser-resistant coating material for the surface of 7075 aluminum alloy was prepared in this paper. The performance of 7075 aluminum alloy coated with this coating was analyzed and tested by combining numerical simulation and experimental verification. The test results show that under the same laser irradiation conditions and geometric dimensions, the breakdown time of 7075 aluminum alloy coated with the laser-resistant coating is prolonged by 541.6%, and its laser-induced damage resistance is significantly improved.

To improve the laser-induced damage resistance of 7075 aluminum alloy, a typical aerospace material, a laser-resistant coating material for the surface of 7075 aluminum alloy was prepared in this paper. The performance of 7075 aluminum alloy coated with this coating was analyzed and tested by combining numerical simulation and experimental verification. The test results show that under the same laser irradiation conditions and geometric dimensions, the breakdown time of 7075 aluminum alloy coated with the laser-resistant coating is prolonged by 541.6%, and its laser-induced damage resistance is significantly improved.

To address the difficulty in continuously and accurately quantifying the time-dependent damage size of targets under coupled laser–tangential airflow action, this paper proposes a piecewise exponential damage inversion modeling method combining deep learning and physical driving. A synchronous laser–tangential airflow experimental platform is built, and 0–5 s damage time-series images are collected to construct a dataset. The YOLO26 real-time visual detection network is selected to realize automatic identification of ablation molten spot regions, with model precision of 0.984, mAP@0.5:0.95 = 0.966, and single-frame inference time of 27.6 ms. Relying on a self-developed visual interactive program, batch time-series image automatic recognition and size conversion are completed, and 1.6–5.0 s is determined as the reliable quantitative interval. Based on the effective data in this interval, the competitive coupling effect between airflow shear-induced melting enhancement and convective cooling is analyzed. A piecewise exponential evolution model containing a quadratic modulation term of tangential airflow is constructed, which well describes the three-stage nonlinear law of damage “initiation–expansion–stabilization”. A genetic algorithm is used to complete global parameter fitting under multiple working conditions. The average relative errors of the model for damage length and width are both lower than 2.1%, RMSE is less than 0.7 mm, MAE is less than 0.52 mm, and $R^2$ is higher than 0.994. This work can provide a theoretical basis and technical scheme for quantitative time-series analysis of damage in metal targets irradiated by high-energy lasers.

To investigate the laser ablation resistance and damage mechanism of ZrO₂ ceramic coatings under high-speed airflow, a ZrO₂ coating was prepared on an aluminum alloy substrate via atmospheric plasma spraying. Laser ablation tests were conducted under different Mach number airflow conditions using a laser ablation test platform. The results show that the coating exhibits a high reflectivity of approximately 97%, and its laser energy coupling coefficient (3%) is about 79% lower than that of the substrate. In the absence of airflow, laser irradiation induces a phase transformation from tetragonal to cubic in the coating, while high-speed airflow suppresses this transformation through convective cooling. The extent of coating damage intensifies with higher laser power and smaller spot sizes. High-speed airflow primarily negatively impacts the ablation resistance by enhancing molten material migration, increasing the cooling rate, and strengthening aerodynamic shear effects. After ablation, the coating can be divided into unaffected, lightly affected, and highly affected zones. High-speed airflow inhibits the melting process, resulting in fewer cracks and a refined grain size due to rapid cooling. The ablation mechanism analysis reveals that irradiation forms a molten pool at the center, which expands and ejects material, creating an ablation crater. Thermal stress during cooling induces micro-cracks. The introduction of high-speed airflow effectively removes molten material, disperses the plasma plume, increases the ablation rate and crater depth, and causes asymmetric cooling that alters thermal stress distribution, leading to directional crack propagation. The study demonstrates that high-speed airflow transforms the laser ablation mechanism from a thermo-mechanical coupled process into a dynamic, multi-field coupled process involving thermal, mechanical, and aerodynamic interactions.

Laser irradiation, as a high-energy input, induces a rapid temperature rise on a structure’s surface, resulting in a localized stress concentration, which is one of the key elements in catastrophic failure. Accurate structural health monitoring of plates should take stress distribution into account. In this paper, we present a theoretical model for determining the stress state of a plate under combined laser radiation and airflow, using temperature values from several discrete measurement points as input. First, a fitting function was proposed based on data-driven thermal analysis, which is utilized to acquire the temperature distribution on the whole surface. The stress state near the area of the laser radiation was then calculated using a theoretical model based on the elasticity theory of an axis-symmetric problem. With the incorporation of the data-driven method, the model is then extended from a baseline analytical model to account for three-dimensional heat-conduction effects and the nonlinear temperature dependence of thermophysical properties. The effectiveness and precision of the proposed model were verified by coupled thermal-mechanical simulations. The current work can provide substantial support for developing a structural health monitoring system for aerospace structures exposed to laser radiation.

Under continuous-wave laser irradiation, 7075 aluminum alloy is susceptible to melting and through-thickness penetration, while high-speed airflow may modify its thermal response and damage evolution. Bare and Cu–Ag–Zn-coated 7075 aluminum alloy targets were examined at airflow velocities of 510 and 1020 m/s using an 8 kW, 1080 nm laser with a 3 cm spot diameter. Melting onset and penetration breakdown were identified from image sequences sampled at 0.1 s intervals; back-surface temperature and transmitted-power measurements provided supporting evidence. For bare targets, the descriptive mean breakdown times were 1.97 and 1.95 s at 510 and 1020 m/s, respectively, compared with 4.13 s in a non-concurrent static reference study. The corresponding melting-onset times (1.03 and 1.05 s) were close to the static reference value of 1.17 s. For coated targets at 1020 m/s, three observed breakdown times (23.6, 50.0, and 51.2 s) yielded a descriptive mean of 41.6 s, approximately 21 times the bare-target mean of 1.95 s. A separate two-specimen subset (Batches 2 and 4), excluding the record associated with suspected coating damage of unverified origin, yielded a mean of 50.6 s (approximately 26 times); this subset ratio is not a stable performance metric. At 510 m/s, the three coated specimens showed neither visible melting nor penetration within their respective 30, 50, and 60 s observation windows, yielding right-censored bounds of >30, >50, and >60 s without an estimable arithmetic mean. In the two coated specimens with identifiable melting onset at 1020 m/s, melting was delayed by approximately 48.7 s relative to the bare-target mean, whereas the subsequent melting-to-breakdown intervals were 0.8–1.0 s. All comparisons are descriptive and limited to the tested conditions; neither velocity dependence nor the relative contributions of airflow-induced mechanisms can be established.