Improvement of fatigue behavior of steel component treated by fluid bed peening (FBP)

Fatigue problem in steel bridge has been investigated for a long time by structural engineers. Various surface treatments such as shot peening, air-hammer peening, grinding, polishing, can improve the fatigue life of steel component. In recent years, Fluid Bed Peening (FBP) methods are investigated at the university of Rome “Tor Vergata”. Fluid Bed Peening (FBP) as a technique of surface treatments can dramatically improve the fatigue behaviour, and demand less operational parameters. Material tests done by M. Barletta et al. showed FBP can improve the roughness of material surface significantly. The measurements showed the surface properties were significantly improved, and were supposed to increase the fatigue resistance. In this paper, the fatigue behavior of specimens treated by FBP was investigated. The specimens were divided into four different groups: simple (group A), simple and treated by FBP (group B), notched (group C), notched and treated by FBP (group D), and were tested under cyclic constant-amplitude loading. Based on the tests, this paper focused on the improvement effect to the fatigue behavior of the specimens, and also the surface properties were discussed.