Study on the effect of the strengthen grinding process surface coverage on the micro-morphology, micro-hardness, roughness, and residue stress of GCr15 bearing steels

Abstract

In this study, the surface integrity of GCr15 bearing steels processed by different surface coverage of the strengthen grinding process (SGP) has been theoretical and experimentally investigated. OpenCV-Python-based image processing algorithm was used to extract the evolution of the shot peening coverage. The surface morphology, roughness, equivalent plastic deformation (PEEQ), microhardness, and residual stress were analyzed. Results show that as surface coverage increase from 100 % to 400 %, the PEEQ and microhardness, and theoretical and actual residual stress, behave similarly. The highest microhardness and residual stress reach 851.3 HV and − 1182 MPa, respectively. The variation of surface roughness shows a significant difference, especially at the surface coverage of 300 %, the measured roughness is reduced by approximately 65 % compared to simulation. The possible mechanisms were further discussed. This work demonstrated that the proposed theoretical modeling method could be an efficient approach for controlling the process parameters of multiphase jet flow in practical applications.