Turning/Shot peening of Nickel-based powder metallurgy superalloy: Effect on surface integrity and high-temperature low-cycle fatigue properties

In this study, a nickel-based powder metallurgy alloy was processed via turning, ceramic bead peening, and shot peening by high-intensity cast-iron shots and low-intensity ceramic beads (denoted as compound shot peening). We investigated the surface morphology (surface stress concentration factor, K_st), the surface residual stress profile, microstructure, and the hardness gradient of three surface states and compared the high-temperature low-cycle fatigue lives. The results showed that the surface stress concentration coefficients after turning, ceramic bead peening, and compound shot peening were 2.39, 1.98, and 2.12, respectively. The average surface roughness, S_a, after turning was low, but the bottom of the tool mark was sharp, so the K_st value was higher than that after shot peening, which formed a round bottom by bead blasting. Compared with ceramic bead peening, a surface structure with a deeper compressive residual stress profile and a higher hardness gradient was formed after compound shot peening, and nanostructured features appeared on the outermost surface. The estimated low-cycle fatigue lives after the ceramic bead peening and compound shot peening were 0.99 and 3.13 times longer than after the turning process respectively with strain amplitude 0.5% at 538℃. Moreover the gain of compound shot peening on low cycle fatigue performance gradually decreases with the increase of the strain amplitude.