Studies on ultra-short pulsed laser shock peening of stainless-steel in different confinement media

Abstract

We investigate the role of liquid confinement media on ultra-short pulsed Laser Shock Peening (LSP). The LSP of stainless-steel 316 and 316 L was studied using Ti: Sapphire laser pulses of about 2 ps duration, maximum energy of about 1 mJ and pulse repetition rate of 5 kHz in different liquid confinement media of Ethanol, Deionized water and separate aqueous solutions of NaCl and Glycerol. It is found that the laser fluence and/or energy attenuating mechanisms like self-focusing, filamentation, plasma breakdown in the confinement media are less significant with ps laser pulses than those with sub-ps or fs pulse durations. It is shown that the resulting surface hardness of the peened steel as a function of laser fluence depends significantly on the confinement media and the relative increase in the hardness increases monotonically with the acoustic impedance of the liquid of the confinement medium used during LSP.