Study on fatigue damage characteristics of deformable mirrors under thermal-mechanical coupling effect

In a wavefront correction process, both the mechanical effect and the irradiation of a high-power continuous-wave laser distort the deformable mirror (DM) surface, which inevitably speeds up the fatigue damage of the DM. By utilizing the stress analysis model for the fatigue damage of the DM, the fatigue damage effects are analyzed quantitatively on the consideration of thermal-mechanical coupling effects, and the fatigue life prediction model has further been proposed based on the S-N curve and Miner cumulative damage theory. On this basis, thermal-mechanical conditions have been analyzed, and the influence of laser parameters on the fatigue life of the DM has also been discussed in detail. The results indicate that the increasing of maximum temperature rise of the DM leads to the increasing of stress, and further brings about the decreasing of the fatigue life. Meanwhile, the position at the rear surface of the DM subjected to the maximum stress always presents the minimum fatigue life. Furthermore, the laser irradiation makes the DM more easily damaged when the DM is correcting a distorted wavefront, and the fatigue life decreases with the increasing of irradiation time and power density for a given peak and valley (PV) value of the corrected wavefront. Additionally, the fatigue life also decreases with the increasing of power density and the decreasing of spot radius for a certain total irradiation. On the other hand, for the given laser parameters, the influence of the mechanical effect on fatigue life is gradually apparent with increasing PV value of the corrected wavefront, and when the PV value is more than 2λ, the mechanical effect instead of the thermal effect becomes the key factor for fatigue damage of the DM.