Laser Shock Processing with Different Conditions of Treatment on Duplex Stainless Steel

The laser shock processing (LSP) has been developed as an effective alternative to traditional methods for improvement of metallic materials properties and as surface treatment to metals. Duplex stainless steel is a material that has a microstructure formed by two phases, with approximately equal amounts of each one. This stainless steel has wide applications in different fields like shipping, petrochemical, and chemical industries. We present results of the LSP performance using two pulse density configurations of 2500 and 5000 pulses/cm(2), both of them at laser irradiation of 532 and 1064 nm (keeping approximately constant power density), in order to treat in under water-jet the surface of 2205 duplex stainless steel samples without coating. A flat mirror and a converging lens is used to deliver 400 mJ/pulse, (5 ns FWHM, 1.1 mm spot diameter with 532 nm wavelength) and 850 mJ/pulse, (6 ns FWHM, 1.5 mm spot diameter with 1064 nm wavelength) laser pulse produced by 10 Hz Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. A motor-controlled x-y precision stage is used, for sweep the treated zone on sample. The use of two wavelengths with approximately the same power density is an effective way for obtaining high compressive residual stresses (similar to 90% of the yield stress). An improvement of hardness (12-25%) at the surface of 2205 duplex stainless steel due to LSP is presented.