Deep Drilling of Structural Timber with High Power Ultrashort Pulsed Laser Radiation

Deep drilling of structural timber using ultra short pulse laser ablation is investigated directed towards using this for a novel approach for reinforcement and connection of structural timber. To gain a basic understanding of the interaction processes, the optical properties as well as the different abla-tion behavior of early and late wood are investigated and discussed. Based on these findings a hy-pothesis is formulated that directly links the local cell density with the ablation behavior of wood. Furthermore, deep drilling processes are successfully applied to structural timber despite inhomoge-neities of the material. We show that the damaging effects of the laser drilling on the mechanical properties of the realized screw connections is negligible.