MEASUREMENT OF RESIDUAL STRESS IN MACHINED CERAMIC WORKPIECE

INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS RESIDUAL STRESS? - Stresses that remain within a part after it has been deformed and all external forces have been removed - In a structural material or component are those stresses which exist in the object without the application of any service or other external loads

MACROSTRESS AND MICROSTRESS

MACRO - may vary within the body of the component over a range much larger than the grain size. MICRO - results from differences within the microstructure of a material and it can change sign and/or magnitude over distances comparable to grain size of the material under analysis. MECHANICALLY ORIGINATED - due to manufacturing processes that produce nonuniform plastic deformation - may develop naturally during processing or treatment or may be introduced deliberately to develop a particular stress profile in a component

Cause of Residual stress

thermal expansion during heating and cooling process. local distension (being stress beyond normal dimension) occurring during phase transformations. differential plastic transformation, such as that occurring during surface grinding

Effect of residual stress

Beneficial-as in the case in a number of toughening mechanism that have been identified Detrimental-the possibility of spontaneous fracture of the material. Either way, it is important that the residual stress and their effects should be understood, so that the benefits can be maximized and the detrimental effects avoided.

MATERIAL INVESTIGATED
The material investigated was a commercially available (Ceramics For Industry, CFI) SILICON NITRIDE (GPSN, SN-N3208). Silicon nitride (i.e. Si3N4) is a hard ceramic having high strength over a broad temperature range, moderate thermal conductivity, low coefficient of thermal expansion, moderately high elastic modulus, and unusually high fracture toughness for a ceramic.

MATERIAL PREPARATION
Sintered cylindrical samples with 20 mm diameter and 10 mm height were prepared for shot peening and ball-on-plate tests by a successive grinding and polishing of the flat surfaces.

MEASUREMENT PROCEDURE

1. SHOT PEENING
1. Shot peening was performed with an injection system. 2. Two different peening times and two different pressures, 8 different shot peening treatments were applied to the polished silicon nitride samples.

2. X-RAY DIFFRACTION ANALYSIS

The microplastic deformation was determined using the effect of lattice defects (e.g dislocations) on the width of the diffraction line. The macroscopic residual stresses were determined on basis of the shift of the diffraction line.

3. BALL-ON-PLATE TEST
1) the polished and shot peened ceramic plates are loaded by a silicon nitride ball with a diameter of 11.11 mm. 2) The load is increased stepwise until a typical cone-crack appears. 3) Because of the statistical behavior of ceramics, the load which causes fracture varies from test to test within a certain scatter-band. In this paper, the fracture load F, means the load which causes fracture with a probability of 50%.

ANALYSIS

1. PLASTIC DEFORMATION IN CERAMICS

From a research by Wulf Pfeiffer and Michael Rombach on Macroscopic and Microscopic Residual Stresses in Ceramics, it reported that contact loading residual stresses due to mechanical loading has been thought to have not a significant effect on brittle materials like ceramics. Nevertheless, high microplastic deformation and residual stresses have been determined by X-ray diffraction methods for ceramics due to hard machining procedures like lapping and grinding.

 Both machining induced residual stresses and damage affect the strength. Figure 1 (next slide) shows that due to high compressive residual stresses conventionally ground silicon nitride reveals a slightly higher transverse bending strength than creep feed ground silicon nitride although a higher amount of damage is introduced.

 By using short peening and ball-on-plate test, it show that the possibility of a controlled development of plastic deformation and compressive residual stresses without additional significant damage is supported by the result of contact loading tests [Figure 2].

Fig. 2: Ball on plate test on silicon nitride: Development of plastic deformation and fracture as a sphere radius R in mm function of the ball radius.

 The load was increased until plastic deformation or fracture was observed. If the diameter of the indenter sphere is below a certain critical value, plastic deformation is obtained before fracture occurs.

2. Microplastic Deformation And Residual Stress Fields

i. All shot peening procedures resulted in substantial microplastic deformation and high compressive residual stresses up to 1300 MPa at the surface decreasing to zero within the first 10 m. ii. The microplastic deformation and residual stresses differ significantly from the deformation and stress fields of the polished sample showing negligible amounts of deformation and stress.

iii. As expected, the deformation and stress fields depend on the shot peening conditions. iv. The highest surface stresses are created using long peening times whereas high peening pressures lead to deep reaching compressive stress fields. v. In general, the size of the beads does not seem to have a dominant influence on the deformation and stress fields.

3. Experimentally Determined Load Capacities

i. The load capacities F, determined experimentally in the ball-on-plate test point out the significant gain of strength (up to 50 %) of the shot peened samples with respect to the polished reference samples. ii. The highest load capacity is found for the long time shot peening at high pressure using coarse grained beads. iii. As these samples show the deepest reaching residual stress fields, it can be concluded that mainly the depth of the shot peening induced residual stress field is responsible for the gain in load capacity.

CONCLUSION