Fatigue life improvement through surface nanostructuring of stainless steel by means of surface mechanical attrition treatment
Résumé
The effect of a nanocrystalline surface layer on the fatigue behavior of a 316L stainless steel is investigated. Significant enhancements of the yield stress and the fatigue limit have been achieved through surface mechanical attrition treatment (SMAT). It is also shown that these mechanical characteristics after SMAT can be significantly improved by the use of a short post-annealing treatment. Such annealing treatment is suggested to cause a recovery at the grain boundaries leading to a reduction of the internal stress.