Abstract
A new cavitation peening processing unit was made to obtain greater peening effect. The purpose of this study is to investigate the improvement in fatigue strength of the steel gear cavitation-peened using this processing unit. The case-hardened steel rollers and gears were cavitation -peened under a processing time of 1 minute, and were fatigue-tested using a roller testing machine and a gear testing machine. The hardness and the compressive residual stress of the test specimens were increased by the cavitation peening. While, the surface roughness of the cavitation-peened test specimens was almost the same to that of the non-peened ones. In the fatigue tests, the fatigue life of the cavitation-peened test specimens was longer than that of the non-peened ones. Moreover, the fatigue strength of the test specimens was increased by the cavitation peening. This study revealed that the fatigue strength of steel gear was improved by the cavitation peening under a processing time of 1 minute.
