Surface treatment effects on bulk material fatigue resistance

Lightening structural components is becoming more and more important for a lot of applications, particularly in the automotive and aerospace fields. From this point of view, the choice of the most effective surface treatments can play a fundamental role in the enhancement of the fatigue resistance, and hence in the mass reduction, of mechanical components. In this chapter, a review of recent studies on the effects of surface treatments on the fatigue and contact fatigue behaviour of different bulk materials is reported. Fatigue and contact fatigue tests on treated specimens and components made it possible to collect and analyze a large amount of data. Theoretical-numerical models were also developed to verify and justify the experimental results and to predict the fatigue behaviour of surface treated components. Materials ranging from structural steels to light alloys, such as titanium and aluminum ones, are considered. With regard to the surface treatments, particular attention is pai...