Effect of Thermal and Mechanical Loadings on the Residual Stress Field in a Nickel Based Superalloy using X-Ray Laue Microdiffraction

The shot-peening operation is used to improve the fatigue lifetime of mechanical components through the introduction of compressive residual stresses and plastic deformation in a surface layer. In this study, the Laue microdiffraction technique is used to investigate deviatoric strain fields caused by the shot-peening operation and their redistribution after fatigue testing in a nickel-based polycrystalline superalloy with a 40 mu m average grain size.