Determination of the penetration depth of ceramic blasting particles during composite peening

Composite peening is a process to embed ceramic particles into the surface of materials with the aim to improve the mechanical and tribological properties. These properties depend essentially on the penetration depth of the particles. In order to investigate the penetration depth achieved with composite peening, micrographs were taken and evaluated employing digital image processing. In composite peening, the blasting particles penetrate the surface of the substrate depending on the process parameters. Models from the field of solid particle erosion were applied to predict the penetration depth of the particles. These analytical models can be used to evaluate the influence of specific process parameters on the penetration depth in composite peening. Furthermore, an additional model from ballistics was implemented. A good qualitative agreement was found between the analytical approaches and the experiments regarding the penetration depth after composite peening for the given system. In the future, this will allow estimating the penetration depth for other process parameters and materials for composite peening as well as for issues related to solid particle erosion.