Effects of process combinations of milling, grinding, and polishing on the surface integrity and fatigue life of GH4169 components

The nickel-based superalloy GH4169 is widely applied in the aviation industry due to its outstanding mechanical properties. However, many blades of GH4169 are still produced by milling and manual polishing, which is costly and unreliable. In this article, GH4169 superalloy components manufactured with combination processes of milling, grinding, and polishing were comparatively studied involving surface integrity and fatigue performance. Test results indicate that the final polishing is the most dominant process that influences the high-cycle fatigue life of GH4169 components. Samples produced via cubic boron nitride grinding and numerical control polishing with a diamond-rubber wheel exhibit fatigue limits of 150 MPa higher than the milled and manually polished samples. Cubic boron nitride grinding induces a considerable compressive residual stress profile with a magnitude of -930 MPa and a depth of 200 μm. Milling induces a typical “hook” residual stress profile with 318 MPa at the surface. Polishing affects the machined surface by two ways, the removal effect and the squeezing effect. The squeezing effect induces a shallow compressive residual stress with approximately −1000 MPa, therefore improves the surface condition. However, inevitable omissions, scratches, texture disorders, and knock marks in hand-polishing are the main causes of the unstable high-cycle fatigue life of hand-polished components.