Effect of laser shock peening on combined low- and high-cycle fatigue life of casting and forging turbine blades

Laser shock peening (LSP) is a novel effective surface treatment method to improve the fatigue performance of turbine blades. To study the effect of LSP on combined low- and high-cycle fatigue (CCF) life of turbine blades, the CCF tests were conducted at elevated temperatures on two types of full-scale turbine blades, which were made of K403 by casting and GH4133B by forging. Probabilistic analysis was conducted to find out the effect of LSP on fatigue life of those two kinds of blades. The results indicated that LSP extended the CCF life of both casting blades and forging blades obviously, and the effect of LSP on casting blades was more evident; besides, a threshold vibration stress existed for both casting blades and forging blades, and the CCF life tended to be extended by LSP only when the vibration stress was below the threshold vibration stress. Further study of fractography was also conducted, indicating that due to the presence of compressive residual stress and refined grains induced by LSP, the crack initiation sources in LSP blades were obviously less, and the life of LSP blades was also longer; since the compressive residual stress was released by plastic deformation, LSP had no effect or adverse effect on CCF life of blade when the vibration stress of blade was above the threshold vibration stress.