Developers and users of industrial remote laser beam welding applications are often faced with different challenges under the conditions of series production. First, those applications are preferably conducted without any localized gas shielding, and therefore, specific interactions between the laser radiation and the welding fumes are very likely to occur, causing an impairment of the process stability, the reliability and the weld seam quality. Second, welding fume residuals are capable of contaminating workpieces, optical components and other parts of the processing chamber, and they are also able to cause a serious pollution of the cabin atmosphere, because a significant part of the welding fume species is harmful or even toxic and carcinogenic. Each of these points gives a good reason to develop appropriate cabin air flow concepts, but in practice, it is still a challenge to design and optimize the air or gas flow because (i) the conditions of an ideal gas flow regime are uncertain, (ii) different gas flows are able to interact in complex manners, and (iii) it is costly to describe and monitor the gas flow characteristics inside the processing chamber experimentally.

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