Scratch and wear resistance of interstitial-free steel subjected to severe shot peening

Surface integrity in terms of scratch and wear resistance is the major concern of any engineering component, which is attributed to most of the surface damages. A popular way of improving such behaviours is the mechanical treatment of the surface. The current investigation studied the improvement of scratch and wear properties by performing shot peening on the Ti–Nb stabilised interstitial free steel, a popular choice in automotive industries. The samples were shot-peened at different coverages. It was found that the shot-peened samples showed a superior scratch and wear behaviour as compared to as-received samples. The scratch hardness was improved by 2.4 times, the wear volume was decreased by 59.6%, and the wear rate was minimal for the 2000% peened sample.