Apresentação Pública do Projeto de Tese de Doutoramento do Mestre Miguel Catela

Seminário: Solar laser operation under non-continuous solar tracking

Mestre Miguel Catela (aluno PDEF)

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Dawei Liang

Coorientadora: Dra. Cláudia R. Vistas

Local: Auditório Manuel Laranjeira do Ed. I

Resumo:

Compared to conventional lasers, solar lasers offer reduced operating costs and improved environmental sustainability. However, in order to sustain laser emission, a solar tracking system must continuously operate with high precision, which can increase energy consumption and lead to reduced system lifetime. To address this limitation, we propose a novel solar laser head for solar pumping under non-continuous solar tracking. Using a heliostat, solar radiation was redirected towards a first-stage parabolic concentrator. At its focus, an aspheric lens further concentrated the solar rays onto multiple Nd:YAG rods positioned within a single pump cavity. Furthermore, the system incorporated a homogenizer to ensure stable and uniform pump flux into the laser rods. Zemax ® and LASCAD TM analysis demonstrated simultaneous and stable 1064 nm continuous-wave solar laser emissions with similar multimode power levels, even with azimuthal solar tracking errors up to ±0.5ᵒ. More importantly, simultaneous and stable TEM00 mode solar laser emissions were also numerically attained under non-continuous solar tracking.