Simulation of residual stress and micro-plastic deformation induced by laser shock imprinting on TC4 titanium alloy aero-engine blade

In laser shock processing (LSP) of aero-engine blades, overlap marks due to spot over-lapping cause irregular surface morphology that becomes a source of cracks under fatigue behaviors. This reduces the beneficial effect of compressive residual stress induced by LSP and undermines fatigue performance of blades. In this paper, laser shock imprinting (LSI) is proposed to improve fatigue performance of aero-engine blades. In this process, a layer of contact film with micro-grooves is placed between the absorption layer and the workpiece (blade) of the LSP. By using the double action of laser shock wave and micro-grooves in contact film, blade surface morphology is transformed towards the direction conducive to improve its fatigue performance. Using ABAQUS software, Johnson-Cook model and Fabbro model were considered to study the plastic rheological behavior of blade surface material induced by LSI. Effect of process parameters namely, peak pressure, impact number and spot overlapping ratio on residual stress and micro-plastic deformation of blade surface were studied. Simulation results showed that under the action of laser shock wave, blade surface material flowed into micro-grooves in contact film via extrusion plastic deforma-tion. This resulted in micro-bulge morphology having geometrically specific arrangement on blade surface, which achieved accurate control of micro-plastic deformation on blade surface. Increase in peak pressure and impact number increase the surface micro-bulges height. However, increase in peak pressure lowers the stress difference between bulging edge and non-bulge zones. It was found that 33% spot overlapping impact resulted in more uniform surface micro-bulge morphology on blade surface.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

In this paper, laser shock imprinting (LSI) is proposed to improve the fatigue performance of aero-engine blades. By using a contact film with micro-grooves, the surface morphology of the blades is transformed to enhance their fatigue performance. The study shows that by adjusting the process parameters, such as peak pressure and impact number, the residual stress and micro-plastic deformation of the blade surface can be controlled, leading to an improved surface morphology.