Some Investigations into Low Plasticity Burnishing of AISI 316L

Results of the latest research indicate that the life and the reliability of machine components are affected greatly by the varieties of surface enhancement technologies applied and also by the sequence and conditions of their application. Low Plasticity Burnishing (LPB) is a new method of surface enhancement, which can provide deep stable surface compression for improved surface integrity characteristics. The present study focuses only on the surface roughness and surface micro-hardness aspects using full factorial design of experiments. After studying the effects of various parameters of the LPB process on AISI 316, favourable and optimum conditions could be predicted and tailored for different requirements. The parameters that have greater influence on the surface roughness in the decreasing order of importance are number of passes, ball diameter, pressure, and speed, whereas ball diameter, speed, pressure, and number of passes is the order for the surface hardness. In order to minimize the roughness of the surface it is advisable to set the speed, pressure, number of passes at high level and ball diameter at low level looking into the strong interaction that pressure is involved with speed and number of passes. After analysing the interaction effects of parameters on the surface hardness, it is advisable to set the speed, number of passes at lower level and ball diameter, burnishing pressure at higher level to maximize the surface hardness.