Strengthening Performance Optimization of Single Ball Impact Treatment by Evaluating Residual Stress

Residual stress plays an essential role in affecting the strengthening performance by a surface treatment. Studying the impact of a single ball on a target surface is the basis of shot peening technology in order to obtain the distribution of the residual stress, and to optimize the processing parameters. In this paper, a numerical model has been developed to represent single ball impacts on high manganese steel by considering different processing parameters. It was found that by increasing the ball diameter and impact velocity, the depth of maximum residual compressive stress and the depth of the residual compressive stress layer became significantly enlarged due to increasing kinetic energy of the impacting ball. It was also found from simulation that with an increase in ball impact angle, the maximum residual compressive stress, the depth of maximum residual compressive stress and the depth of the residual compressive stress layer were significantly improved; an exception was the surface residual compressive stress, which showed a decreasing trend. Moreover, by employing quantitative analysis with the entropy method, it was found that within the range of processing parameters considered in the simulation, it is recommended to use a ball with a diameter of 0.6 mm to impact the target, with a velocity of 80 m/s and an angle of 90° for the best strengthening performance.