Fatigue enhancement and hardening effect through ultrasonic vibration‐assisted ball‐burnishing process on AISI 1045 steel

Abstract

This paper aims to present a study of the effects of ball burnishing with vibration assistance on the bending fatigue endurance of cylindrical specimens subjected to bending stress and obtain the best input parameters. The specimens were burnished through six different combinations of preload force, number of passes, and vibration assistance, finding that burnishing while applying a 90‐N preload, five passes, and the addition of vibration assistance results in larger fatigue strength. In terms of roughness, it has been proved that vibration‐assisted ball burnishing reduces the mean roughness up to 90%, while enhancing the skewness and kurtosis parameters. The softening effect while deforming, caused by the vibration assistance, helped to reconstruct the surface, obtaining higher depths of affectation and hardening. Fatigue strength was improved by a 6.54% by only adding vibration assistance to the ball‐burnishing process.