Surface Mechanical Grinding Treatment Setup and Tools for Processing Bulk Metallic Materials

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a new surface grinding technique to enhance mechanical properties of metals. Currently, efforts to increase grain size ensure material strengthening, but cost materials ductility. Sometimes ductility can be added back to materials, but this process requires expensive equipment and is not often successful. Purdue researchers have been able to achieve double the mechanical strength of traditional techniques while maintaining ductility in metals by introducing a surface gradient and only using tungsten carbon and cobalt (WC/Co) sphere tips to grind metals thereafter. A mechanical test was conducted with dog-bone shaped samples of twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP) steel and yield strength was found to be over 600 MPa with ten passes as compared to current methods which give TWIP yield strength of just 350 MPa. In addition, microscopy has been used to verify surface parameters including microhardness, height-to-diameter aspect ratio, percent strain by compression, and loading time. Metals processed using the method fine-tuned by Purdue researchers offer an advantage for in a myriad of applications in automotive and oil and gas industries.

Advantages:

-Cost-efficient

-Enhances Mechanical Strength

-Maintains Ductility

Potential Applications:

-Metallurgy

-Automotive

-Oil and Gas

TRL: 4

Intellectual Property:

Keywords: surface grinding technique, mechanical properties, metal strengthening, material ductility, surface gradient, tungsten carbon and cobalt, WC/Co sphere tips, twinning-induced plasticity steel, TWIP steel, yield strength