Effect of shot peening on the fretting wear of Ti–6Al–4V

In this paper, we report on the fretting wear behaviour of polished and shot peened Ti–6Al–4V specimens. For fretting experiments, due to micro-displacements at the interface between two contacting surfaces, two types of damage can be observed: crack initiation and debris formation. Shot peening, which is already well known for improving fatigue resistance of titanium alloys, is shown to have a beneficial effect on the crack initiation and propagation under fretting wear loading, as cracks observed on specimens after cylinder-on-flat fretting tests are shorter in shot peened specimens than in polished ones. It is also demonstrated that shot peening decreases the friction coefficient only at the beginning of the test, as long as the asperities induced by shot peening are not worn-off. The effects of displacement amplitude, normal force and test duration on the wear volume have been investigated: in all cases, shot peening has no significant impact on the wear process. The same amount of debris are formed and ejected for both polished and shot peened specimens. Moreover, it is found that, for both types of specimens, the linear relation, developed for steels and hard coatings, between wear volume and cumulated dissipated energy is not valid in the present case as different wear volumes are measured for the same cumulated dissipated energy, depending on the experimental conditions (normal force, displacement amplitude). Using the test duration as the variable parameter, energy wear coefficients are calculated for different experimental conditions.