Investigating Cavitation Peening Parameters for Fatigue Performance Using Designed Experiment

Mechanical surface enhancement techniques such as cavitation peening (CP) have various design parameters which can affect the fatigue performance of the part. In this study, a full factorial design of experiment is applied to investigate the effects of cavitation peening process parameters on the fatigue performance of carburized steel. These parameters include standoff distance, cavitation number, nozzle size, and exposure time. The response variables considered in this experiment include residual stress, surface roughness and austenitic ratio. Results obtained from full factorial design of experiment method were compared with the results from literature which applied Taguchi method. The comparison revealed that applying full factorial design in this case study is more efficient than Taguchi method since full factorial design considers the interaction effects of variables. Furthermore, the optimal setting of each variable was provided to have the optimum response variables.