Resources such as minerals, geothermal energy, and unconventional hydrocarbons need to be excavated from deeper and harder geologic formations than in the past 100 years. Although, oil & gas drilling technologies have been continuously enhanced to enable more efficient and economic drilling processes, yet their performance suffers significantly in deep and hard formations. Problems mainly include low rate of penetrations, very high drill-bit wear-rates, short drill bit service life, and ultimately result in a high overall drilling cost. Laser Jet Drilling could potentially be such next fundamental drilling process for delivering more and alternative energy to the bit and breaking the rock more efficiently and thus, substantially improve drilling of deep hard rock formations. The application of high-power laser for rock breaking and drilling processes has been demonstrated in this study via Laser (thermally) induced rock softening. A comprehensive experimental approach has been chosen to study the LaserJet drilling process and its rock interaction. Multiple rock types including sandstones, granites, and metamorphic quartzite rocks were characterized to offer a comprehensive overview of possible effects of rock parameters on laser–rock interaction. The initial research results proved that various rock types including very hard ones could be transformed into a drillable state using a high-power laser through thermally induced rock softening. The rock strength, drilling strength and fracture toughness of the studied samples were obtained by means of scratch testing. The overall analysis of the results suggests that thermal rock softening allows to efficiently facilitate a combined laser mechanical assisted drilling system with a possible increase in the rate of penetration of the cutting tool with reduced drilling torque and weight on bit requirements and therefore having a lower energy consumption. Additionally, the drilling costs could be noticeably lessened by improving the drill bit life and reducing the overall drilling time.

与过去100年相比，需要从更深，更坚硬的地质构造中挖掘矿物，地热能和非常规碳氢化合物等资源。尽管石油和天然气钻探技术已得到不断改进，以实现更高效，更经济的钻探工艺，但在深层和坚硬地层中，它们的性能却受到很大影响。问题主要包括低穿透率，非常高的钻头磨损率，短的钻头使用寿命以及最终导致高的整体钻探成本。激光喷射钻探可能是下一个基本钻探过程，用于向钻头传递更多和替代的能量，并更有效地破碎岩石，从而大大改善深层硬岩层的钻探。通过激光（热）诱导的岩石软化，已证明了高功率激光在岩石破碎和钻孔过程中的应用。选择了一种全面的实验方法来研究LaserJet钻孔过程及其岩石相互作用。表征了多种岩石类型，包括砂岩，花岗岩和变质石英岩，以全面概述岩石参数对激光-岩石相互作用的可能影响。最初的研究结果证明，可以通过高功率激光通过热诱导岩石软化将包括坚硬岩石在内的各种岩石类型转换为可钻状态。通过划痕试验获得了所研究样品的岩石强度，钻孔强度和断裂韧性。对结果的整体分析表明，热岩石软化可以有效地促进组合式激光机械辅助钻孔系统的使用，并可能提高切削工具的穿透率，同时降低钻孔扭矩并降低钻头要求的重量，从而降低能耗消费。另外，可以通过改善钻头寿命并减少总体钻探时间来显着降低钻探成本。