Peening

In metallurgy, peening is the process of working a metal's surface to improve its material properties, usually by mechanical means, such as hammer blows, by blasting with shot (shot peening), focusing light (laser peening), or in recent years, with water column impacts (water jet peening) and cavitation jets (cavitation peening). With the notable exception of laser peening, peening is normally a cold work process tending to expand the surface of the cold metal, thus inducing compressive stresses or relieving tensile stresses already present. It can also encourage strain hardening of the surface metal.

Plastic deformation from peening induces a residual compressive stress in a peened surface, along with tensile stress in the interior. This stress state resembles the one seen in toughened glass, and is useful for similar reasons.

Surface compressive stresses confer resistance to metal fatigue and to some forms of corrosion, since cracks will not grow in a compressive environment. The benefit comes at the expense of higher tensile stresses deeper in the part. However, the fatigue properties of the part will be improved, since the stresses are normally significantly higher at the surface in part due to surface imperfections and damage.

Cold working also serves to harden the material's surface. This makes cracks less likely to form at the surface and provides resistance to abrasion. When a metal undergoes strain hardening its yield strength increases but its ductility decreases. Strain hardening actually increases the number of dislocations in the crystal lattice of the material. When a material has a great number of dislocations, plastic deformation is hindered, and the material will continue to behave in an elastic way well beyond the elastic yield stress of the non-strain hardened material.

Plastic deformation from peening can be useful in stretching the surface of an object.

One common use of this peening (stretching) process can be seen in the auto repair and auto custom fabrication industries where manual or machine assisted peening is used to stretch thin sheet metal to create curved surfaces. The manual method uses a hand held peening hammer and is a form of planishing. There are also machine assisted methods that use a version of a power hammer to peen the sheet metal.

Another use of the peening process is to flatten sheet metal and is specifically used as a primary technique to flatten steel belts used in industrial conveying and pressing operations. In this process a steel belt that has a cross curvature can be flattened by peening the concave surface to stretch it and thereby removing the cross-curvature by equalizing the surface length across the belt between the previously concave and convex surfaces. The shot peening of steel belts is usually achieved by using specialized equipment and special peening shot.

When peening is used to induce residual stress or work-harden an object, care needs to be taken with thin parts not to stretch the work-piece. Where stretching is unavoidable then allowances may need to be made in the part design or process application.