Numerical Prediction of the Residual Stress State after Shot Peening

Shot peening is a mechanical surface treatment with the purpose to modify the surface state of a material in order to improve fatigue strength of a component subjected to cyclic loading. The material state after a shot peening treatment is governed by various shot peening parameters. In order to comprehend the complex interaction between process parameters and material state time and money consuming experiments are usually accomplished. Promising alternatives are numerical simulation methods such as FEM1 combined with similarity mechanics having the possibility to predict the shot peening results for arbitrary combinations of shot peening parameters. In this work the residual stress development during shot peening for various shot peening parameters was simulated successfully with a FEM model. Additionally the method of similarity mechanics was used in combination with the FEM simulation results in order to predict residual stress states for a wide parameter field with almost no additional computing effort.