A study on residual stresses in laser surface hardening of a medium carbon steel

The transient thermal stress and the residual stress in laser surface-hardening treatment of a medium carbon steel were analysed by employing a new two-dimensional finite element model. In this formulation, a sliced solution domain, having one element in the hardening direction, was introduced to satisfy the self-equilibrium of the resultant force in the hardening direction. By using the proposed model, the thermal and residual stresses in the laser surface heat treatment were successively calculated. The thermal stress was induced mainly by the temperature gradient and the martensitic phase transformation; the phase transformation was found to have a greater influence on the residual stress than the temperature gradient. The simulation results revealed that a compressive residual stress region occurs near the hardened surface of the workpiece and a tensile residual stress region occurs in the interior of the workpiece, whereas the maximum tensile residual stress occurs along the centre of the laser scanning path in the interior region (y = 0). In comparison with the gaussian distribution of the beam power, the square beam mode results in a wider, but shallower, hardened zone. The calculation results also showed that the high-power beam with the high scanning speed is more suitable for laser surface hardening than the low-power beam with the low scanning speed if the heat input per unit length of the workpiece is maintained constant.