Impact wear behavior of ball burnished 316L stainless steel

This study investigated the damage mechanism occurring in metallic materials working under repeated impact loads. AISI 316L stainless steel was used as the test material. In order to reduce the impact wear (IW) damage without disturbing the structure of the material, a ball burnishing (BB) process was applied to the workpiece surface. IW tests were carried out in air at ambient temperature and a frequency of 5 Hz under a 560 N (0.12 J) load. This study also investigated the effects of three different cycles on the wear mechanism. As a result of the experiments, the amount of deformation and the volume loss on the surface increased in parallel with the number of impacts. Strain hardening occurred and the surface hardness increased. The IW process affected the surface region to a depth of 360 gm. According to the metallographic observations, the wear mechanism occurred in the form of delamination and flake like spalling. The BB process reduced IW induced volume loss between 62% to 53%.