Someone please tell me what Shot-Peening is

[CRVTEC0WNZJ00]

I've looked in the dictionary in my house, I've searched the internet i can't seem to find a good solid definition for "Shot-Peening" as in a set of LS rods beeing Shot-Peened or something, might have spelled wrong but I need a definition if anyone knows it.

[thanasisR]

it is a process where small metal balls are used to bombard the piece of metal being treated eg. conrods. this makes the metallic structure stronger and less prone to fatigue. it would in other words make your ls rods stronger so you can rev it safely at higher rpm without having rod failure (assuming nothing else breaks)

[CRVTEC0WNZJ00]

Thank you, if anyone could go into more detail on it I'd appreciate it.

[martinez32]

the grain structure of metal has slip planes, imperfections or voids which fall in the general catagory of dislocations. A dislocation is the first thing to fail when any force is put onto the metal, but grain bounderies can stop these dislocations from moving.

To combat this, you need to increase grain boudary area meaning the smaller more compact the grains that are close together, the stronger it will be. Smaller grains = more stronger, ductile metal. larger grains = brittle

When you heat treat a metal, the grains are melted,rearranged and settled, but the longer the heat is present the larger the grains will grow, thus if you know the exact properties of metal you can control heat, time and cooling to extract the exact properties you want out of the metal.

Shot peening is basically shooting BB's at the metal to compact the grain structure. This mostly relives residual stresses that are present on the surface! The benefit of this is that no heat is involved thus less money, but the depth of the compaction is no where near heat treatment.