Effects of Burnishing Parameters on the Surface Characteristics, Microstructure and Microhardness in EN Series Steels

Surface finish and surface hardness of the components play vital role in quality of products/components, in general and failure resistance, in particular. One of the finishing process involving surface plastic deformation that introduces compressive residual stresses and thereby improves fatigue resistance is "Burnishing". Even though the burnishing process is widely employed, its process parameters were not systematically studied till date and not fully established for various important structural materials. The burnishing process parameters include force, speed, feed, and number of tool passes. In the present study, the data obtained from systematically conducted burnishing experiments are correlated with theoretical design using Taguchi method in case of EN series steels (EN 8, EN 24 and EN 31). The surface characterization employed includes optical microscopy, microhardness and magnitude of residual stress. The study revealed a one-to-one correlation between burnishing depth, increase in average microhardness and magnitude of compressive residual stresses and a peak in all these three at intermittent extent of burnishing (either after first or second pass) in all the three alloy steels.