LAUSR

Laser polishing (LP) represents one of the finishing/superfinishing technologies that has experienced a rapid growth over the past two decades. However, while undeniable progress has been achieved on the experimental and/or practical side, the development of the theoretical/numerical models of the continue to be somewhat slower and still dominated by significant simplifying assumptions. Along these lines, the main goal of the present study was to collate the most important modeling developments that were proposed so far in an attempt to synthesize the current stateof-art in the field. While the current consensus is that no single model could provide a comprehensive and accurate picture of the phenomena taking place during LP, it can be asserted at this time that reasonable matches between modeling and experimental results can be obtained under certain conditions. Furthermore, the complexity of the overlapping thermophysical processes that occur during laser polishing combined with the relatively limited database of functional dependencies between material properties and temperature and the impossibility to adequately monitor/measure in real-time many of the process parameters will continue to pose significant modeling and/or validation challenges. Moving forward, it could speculated that additional progress in the latter two categories will likely translate in more accurate representations of the intrinsic mechanisms underlying laser polishing.