The aim of the present work is to study experimentally the formation of the capillary during the drilling and welding by laser beam and to develop the numerical simulation which allows following the dynamics and the evolution of the keyhole. The zinc was chosen as a test material because its thermodynamical properties are well known. To simplify the problem, in the first place the drilling mechanism was studied. Two experimental methods were used to characterize the evolution of the keyhole: the Direct Observation of Drilled Hole method, which allows the visualization of the keyhole after the application of laser pulses of different durations, and Zn-Quartz method, which allows the direct observation of keyhole evolution with CCD camera through the layer of quartz. Then, the information on keyhole evolution was used to develop the simulation of drilling mechanism. After studying the beam power deposition inside the capillary with taking in account the multiple photon reflections, and after estimation of the energy and matter loss during the process, we developed the simulation with FEM software COMSOL Multiphysics, which contains coupled heat transfer, fluid flow and free surface problem allowing considering the effect of recoil pressure on liquid phase ejection. We could observe the formation of an important bolster surrounding the keyhole and the increase of keyhole depth with time. Next, we studied the formation of the keyhole during the laser welding, in other words, during the displacement of the heat source. Using the same technique that was developed for laser drilling, we have obtained the information on keyhole evolution during zinc-quartz welding. We have created the simple simulation, where keyhole temperature and profile were considered as known a priori. We have stated that this model, which takes in account only conduction heat transfer problem, allows to reproduce well the shape of the melted zone both for zinc-zinc and zinc-quartz couples
