Application of High-Energy Laser in Strain-Hardening of Material

Laser is a coherent, convergent and monochromatic beam of electromagnetic radiation and has wide applications in all walks of life. Surface engineering is one of the applications and contains surface alloying/cladding, surface melting/remelting, surface amorphization and surface hardening/shocking. Laser surface hardening/shocking has been proposed as an effective technology for improving surface mechanical and corrosion properties of metals by inducing a compressive residual stress field. The laser shock processing system with high-energy laser is the key technology for industrial application of surface shocking. The laser shock processing system was described in this paper and the power supply system and the samples gripping and handling system were also introduced. Experiment was conducted by the shock processing system and results shows that high-energy laser has led to compressive residual stress in near-surface regions of 1Cr11Ni2W2MoV stainless steel and improved 1Cr11Ni2W2MoV fatigue life greatly.