Evaluation of the fused silica thermal conductivity by comparing infrared thermometry measurements with two-dimensional simulations

A self-consistent approach is proposed to determine the temperature dependent thermal conductivity k(T) of fused silica, for a range of temperatures up to material evaporation using a CO2 laser irradiation. Calculation of the temperature of silica using a two-dimensional axi-symmetric code was linked step by step as the laser power was increased with experimental measurements using infrared thermography. We show that previously reported k(T) does not reproduce the temporal profile as well as our adaptive fit which shows that k(T) evolves with slope discontinuities at the annealing temperature and the softening temperature.