Residual Stress Depth Distribution after Piezo Peening of Quenched and Tempered AISI 4140

Piezo peening is a new alternative mechanical surface treatment process. Thereby a piezo actuator with an indenter is causing mechanical deformation of the surface area by multiple impacts in a defined way. First results for quenched and tempered AISI 4140 show a great potential: large surface compressive residual stresses of up to -1200 MPa could be generated. In order to obtain a process understanding different process parameters are systematically changed. After the mechanical surface treatments the residual stress and full width at half maximum (FWHM) depth distribution were measured using X-ray diffraction technique. By varying the process parameters path distance, feed rate and amplitude several combinations of residual stress and FWHM depth distributions were generated. The dependency of surface residual stresses, penetration depth, FWHM on the process parameters is analyzed.