Latest news and updates at sentenso

Shot peening of undercuts, internal contours and bores is gaining importance, as there is still considerable potential for enhancement of dynamically stressed and failure-critical surface areas of parts with increasing loads.

Not only for applications in jet engine construction and the aerospace industry, but also in the automotive industry and in general mechanical engineering, direct peening of hard-to-access and complex-shaped part areas is more and more moving into the focus of component developers.

In order to meet the growing demand, sentenso has developed a portfolio of deflector peening lances and peening lance heads with inner deflector which meet typical requirements and which have been tested in sentenso´s own technical centre. Peening lances and peening lance heads are available in sizes ranging from 2.5 to 16 mm outside diameter, in several lengths and with one or two outlet openings. Of course the standard portfolio also includes classic cylindrical peening nozzles for external peening.

Furthermore, the sentenso engineering team is available for individual and specific solutions.

On 30 and 31 March, sentenso hosted 12 different companies with a total of 15 experts from the field of shot peening in aircraft engine manufacturing. The German-speaking group of experts meets once a year at alternating locations to discuss practical application issues in the field of shot peening.

Some of the intensively discussed topics were saturation curves in operating mixtures, comparison of measuring methods with Almen Mini-Strips and shaded Almen Strips, distribution of roles and responsibilities of employees in shot peening and many more.

The community of interest was already founded in 2017 and forms a forum for the exchange of ideas and experiences regarding applications, technologies and nomenclature on a high technical level while excluding commercial interests.

The new edition of the cos-alpha user meeting for residual stress analysis was held on 23 March 2022 with 16 participants in sentenso's digital meeting room in Datteln. The online conference, moderated by sentenso application expert Jörg Behler, ensures an intensive and regular exchange of experiences among German-speaking users of the cos-alpha method for X-ray residual stress determination.

In addition to the illustrative live demonstration on the determination of stress tensors, the critical depth determination in the creation of residual stress profiles was discussed. Furthermore, the planned round robin test was also addressed, which is intended to verify the comparability of results from different measurement laboratories and equipment operators. A separate meeting is to be arranged to determine the type and dimensions of the round robin samples.

The User Meeting is very popular and is held annually in addition to the Expert Meeting. While the Expert Meeting focuses on scientific issues, the User Meeting focuses primarily on laboratory and industrial measurement practice.

Review of International Conference on Residual Stresses

The "11th International Conference on Residual Stresses“ (ICRS) was held in Nancy from 27 to 30 March 2022. At this conference, scientists and engineers from many countries met to discuss the latest research results on residual stresses.

At the exhibition booth, which was shared with Pulstec from Japan, practical examples were used to demonstrate how the determination of residual stresses can be easily and reliably automated with the help of an industrial robot and suitable software.

In the poster session, sentenso presented the basics of the cos-alpha method. All in all, there were many opportunities for interesting technical discussions.

When shot peening components, in addition to the surface areas that have to be shot peened explicitly and or optionally, there are often functional surfaces that must be protected from the impact of the shot peening medium.

This requires temporary masking of certain sensitive areas of a component. In addition to time-consuming methods such as masking tapes or expensive solutions as masking devices, UV-curable masking resins are receiving more and more attention in various shot peening and blast cleaning processes. This is also obvious, as this masking process involves little work, moderate material costs, optimal adaptation to complex component geometries, good removability and also automation options.

sentenso Smart Peening Solutions is testing different masking resins and their suitability for various components and peening processes in order to develop recommendable system solutions. You can expect the results and a product presentation in the PeenLetter in spring.

sentenso develops another handpiece for the RotoFlapMaster. The 90° angled design allows the user to apply flap peening even in hard-to-reach areas - user-friendly and compliant to standards.

The design is based on customer-specific requirements of real repair jobs of aircraft components. With the innovative and ergonomic angled handpiece, a further facilitation of work in mobile rotary flap peening is created, which will be optional available to our RotoFlapMaster from spring 2022 on. Due to the powerful battery pack and the comfortable one-button control on the handpiece, the operator works with distinct operating comfort and according to AMS2950 as well as other specifications.

The angled handpiece is fully compatible with the established control unit. Switching between straight and angled handpiece is extremely quick and easy thanks to the push-pull connector.

The importance of residual stresses for the service life of dynamically loaded parts has long been known. Until now, however, the consideration and determination of the residual stress state was mainly limited to experts in materials engineering, aerospace and the automotive industry..

In the recent past, we have been observing a clear trend in various branches of industry towards the expansion of applications for component enhancement through work hardening and the introduction of residual compressive stresses. Shot peening as a variable and broadly applicable process is of particular importance here, especially as it can achieve very homogeneous residual stress states.

With the increasing application of shot peening in new areas, X-ray residual stress determination is also becoming more relevant as faster evaluation methods are required in production environments.

Due to increasing demands for faster and automated measurements and the advancing digitalisation, sentenso developed StressEasy, a powerful software tool that allows the automation of a variety of measurement tasks for residual stress analysis with the fast X-ray diffractometer µ-X360s and a six-axis robot.

Experts meet online

DGM, DVM and Stahlinstitut VDEh are organising this year's materials testing conference and welcome scientists and experts from universities, institutes and industry to Aachen. The focal points of the event include test methods, damage analysis and fatigue strength. At the accompanying trade show, sentenso will be carrying out live residual stress measurements.

X-ray residual stress determination using the cos-alpha method is becoming increasingly important in German professional circles as well.

With the µ-X360s, sentenso offers an X-ray stress analyser with area detector for fast and mobile residual stress analysis using the cos-alpha method. However, since the corresponding evaluation method is still quite young, sentenso organises one expert meeting and one user meeting each year. The upcoming expert meeting with residual stress specialists from science and research will take place online due to the pandemic.

The planned topics can be found in the corresponding Quick Info.

Unique combination of theory and practice

The shot peening workshop with level 1 to 3 shot peening training and rotary flap peening in German and English is characterised by its extensive practical programme at sentenso's technical center in Datteln, where otherwise sophisticated shot peening processes are developed.