Retained austenite and residual stress evolution in carbonitrided shotpeened steel

摘要

Carbonitriding followed by shot peening is an important industrial process to improve the mechanical properties of components, especially by producing compressive residual stresses. In addition, a high hardness and strength produced by this process enhances the surface properties and leads also a high resistance to fatigue.In this study, shot peening with different parameters have been employed to treat the carbonitrided specimens. The measurements of residual stress and residual austenite were performed by X-ray diffraction. It is shown, with a simple eigenstrain model, that residual austenite transformation under shot impact contributes to a significant fraction of residual stresses. When the material (750 HV) is peened with 800 HV shot, it represents about 50%, the remaining is due to plasticity. When it is peened with 640HV shot, 100% of residual stresses can be explained by austenite transformation.