The surface nanostructures of commercial pure titanium was realized by the modified shot peening equipment commonly used in industry through the special treatment process. The results show that high-energy-shot-peening(HESP) commonly used to prepare nanostructured surface layers can be achieved by the increase of pill size, pill speed, and treatment time in the commercial shot peening equipment. XRD, SEM and TEM were used to characterize the surface layer microstructure of treated specimens. The analytic results show that the main deformation mode of commercial pure Ti is twinning. At the beginning of deformation, the dislocations are formed and twins occur within or on plane, then twins in intersection plane appear, and at last the twin characteristics disappear in the surface layer after longer treatment time. The deformation layer depth increases with treatment time in a certain period when the pill size and speed are unchanged. And in the severe plastic deformation (SPD) layer in which the twins are not identified easily by using SEM, the nanocrystalline microstructures are found under TEM. The finest grain size in the surface layer is about 40 nm, and the depth of nanostructured layers is over 60 μm. The microhardness of the nanostructured surface layers is enhanced significantly after shot peening compared with that of the initial simple.
MA Guang LUO Yu CHEN Chun-huan REN Rui-ming WU Wei LI Zhi-qiang ZENG Yan-song
The high-energy shot peening (HESP) technique was used to obtain the surface nanocrystalline microstructure for a hcp metal titanium. XRD, SEM and TEM were applied to characterize the microstructure of the surface layer. Large amount of the deformation twins in the surface layer were observed by SEM in the specimens after HESP treatment in a shot-time, and the number of deformation twins both in a single plane and in intersecting planes increases with HESP time, until the twin character disappears completely in the top surface layer, which means that the severe plastic deformation(SPD) occurs on the surface. The XRD analysis results show that after HESP treatmen for 30 - 60 min the surface grain size decreases to nanoscale. According to the TEM images and corresponding diffraction patterns from SPD areas of the 120 min-treatment specimen, the measured grain size near the surface is about 20 - 30 nm. The grain size in deformation layer increases with the depth from the surface, and the nanostructured layer is about 20 μm in depth. Therefore, the surface nanocrystalline and a gradient microstructure from the surface to the matrix are obtained, which results in the micro-hardness decreasing from surface to the matrix gradually.
