Retardation of crack initiation and growth in austenitic stainless steels by laser peening without protective coating

Laser peening without protective coating (LPPC) has been applied to water-immersed SUS304 (Type 304) and SUS316L (Type 316L) austenitic stainless steels. The surface residual stress of both materials was converted from tensile to compressive of several hundreds of megapascals by LPPC with a Q-switched and frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser. The depth of the compressive residual stresses after LPPC exceeded 1 mm from the surface. Accelerating stress corrosion cracking (SCC) tests in a high-temperature and corrosive-water environment showed that LPPC completely prevented the SCC initiation of sensitized SUS304. SCC tests of pre-cracked samples were also performed for SUS304, which indicated that LPPC inhibits the propagation of the small pre-cracks. Rotating bending tests demonstrated that the fatigue strength of SUS316L with LPPC is enhanced by 1.4–1.7 times compared to that of the reference material at 108 cycles.