A Comparison of the Fatigue Life of Shot-Peened 4340M Steel with 100, 200, and 300% Coverage

Shot peening has been widely used for improving the fatigue performance of structural components. The objectives of this study are to increase the fatigue life of 4340M steel by shot peening and to compare performance at three different shot-peening coverages (100, 200, and 300%). The results show that the optimum coverage for 4340M steel is 200% in this experiment. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to evaluate the microstructural properties and estimate the depth and length of the resulting cracks. A proposed innovative technique, which still needs further verification, was applied to enable SEM to differentiate between the appearances of the three coverages. Residual stresses measured using x-ray diffraction showed that 200% coverage had comparatively the highest residual compressive stresses.