The Finite Element Analysis for Shot Peening Process

Abstract

Shot peening process is one of the widely adopted surface strengthening technology in the factory. It has some advantages and disadvantages compared with other processes( casting, welding, stamping, etc). For example the advantages of the shot peening process: process has simple equipment, low cost of doing, not restricted by the shape and location of the parts, easy operation, etc. And the disadvantage is the poor operation condition([1], [2], [3]). Shot peening process is widely used to improve the mechanical strength, wear resistance, fatigue resistance and corrosion resistance of the parts. And also used to surface extinction, to scale, and eliminate the residual stress of casting, forging, welding, etc. The process consists of impacting the surface of the parts by multiple high velocity shots which induce a layer of the plastic deformation near the surface and work-harden the near surface material. And there has a wide variety of the parameters which are known to influence the effectiveness of the shot peening process which can be principally categorized as shot, target and flow parameters. In practice, however, shot peening process is not described by each of the single mentioned process parameters, but principally by coverage percentage([4], [5], [6]), Almen intensity and type of the used peening media. These are the key parameters for industrial calibration of shot peening process. The finite element analysis(FEA) is a method which uses the mathematical approximation method to simulate the real physical system(geometry and loading conditions). And based on the simple and interacting elements which are called unit can use a limited number of unknown variables to approach the infinite unknown quantity of the real system. With time, engineer has developed so many finite element software which can be use at some areas, and we can use the finite element to do simulation which can see the condition after the stress and others boundary conditions. In this paper we will use the finite element analysis software(ABAQUS) to do the simulation for the shot peening process. ABAQUS is a robust finite analysis software for engineering simulation which can solve the problems from the relatively simple linear analysis to many complex non-linear problems([7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [13]). From the simulation in ABAQUS we can get the residual stress near the surface of the plate, and based on the distribution and value to guide the actual production. Firstly we use the intrinsic component in ABAQUS to do the simulation and find that the intrinsic component is difficult for the definition of the boundary conditions. Because the distributed arrangements and sequences are predetermined by intrinsic component which is far from the random impact model in actual production. In need to get the random impact model we developed a random impact model by python language in ABAQUS, and run the script([12], [14], [15]).