Simulation for surface self-nanocrystallization under shot peening

Driven by high frequency and multi-directional shot peens, dislocations of various orientations proliferate into the metal, and accumulate in high density in the surface layer of a shallow depth. Migration, generation and annihilation of dislocations dictate the evolution of mobile dislocation density. Simulation for the experiment of pure iron under repeated shot peen flux of 800 times per square millimeter is carried out, and a dislocation density up to 2.17×10¹¹ mm⁻² is achieved. Dislocations of such density in the surface layer are shown to be capable of forming nano-grains whose size is about 10 nm. Molecular dynamics simulation verifies the formation of nano-grained metals at such dislocation density level. The dislocations are first regrouped to form subcrystallites, then combined to form stable nanocrystallized grains after sufficiently long time of relaxation. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10121202)