SHOT‐PEENING INTENSITIES VS. EDDY CURRENT SIGNALS AS SEEN IN ITERATIVE TREATMENT‐MEASUREMENT EXPERIMENT

We report on progress in a swept high frequency eddy current (SHFEC) technique for characterization of surface residual stress on shot‐peened superalloy surfaces. Our aim here is to demonstrate the sensitivity of our measurement for practical shot peening intensities, i.e. at 4∼6 A. First, we present our improved probe and instrumentation being sufficiently sensitive to resolve the surface conditions at these low Almen intensities, where our earlier measurements encountered noise problems. The previous coil was also larger (18 mm in diameter) than desirable. Our new probe integrates smaller coils (12 mm in diameter, forming an AC bridge) and on‐board electronics on a common printed circuit board, mutually connected at the shortest possible distance. The operational‐amplifier‐based electronics acts as impedance buffers, and maintains the cabling impedance at the characteristic 50 Ω between the probe board and the instruments. We have thus reduced the instrumentation noises. Second, we present the result of...