Surface and Subsurface Analysis of Stainless Steel and Titanium Alloys Exposed to Ultrasonic Pulsating Water Jet

This article deals with the effect of periodically acting liquid droplets on the polished surfaces of AISI 316L stainless steel and Ti6Al4V titanium alloy. These materials were exposed to a pulsating water jet produced using an ultrasonic sonotrode with an oscillation frequency of 21 kHz placed in a pressure chamber. The only variable in the experiments was the time for which the materials were exposed to water droplets, i.e., the number of impingements; the other parameters were kept constant. We chose a low number of impingements to study the incubation stages of the deformation caused by the pulsating water jet. The surfaces of the specimens were studied using (1) confocal microscopy for characterizing the surface profile induced by the water jet, (2) scanning electron microscopy for detailed surface observation, and (3) transmission electron microscopy for detecting the changes in the near-surface microstructure. The surface described by the height of the primary profile of the surface increased with the number of impingements, and was substantially more intense in the austenitic steel than in the Ti alloy. Irregular surface depressions, slip lines, and short cracks were observed in the Ti alloy, whereas pronounced straight slip bands formed in the austenitic steel. The dislocation density near the surface was measured quantitatively, reaching high values of the order of 10¹⁴ m^-2 in the austenitic steel and even higher values (up to 3 × 10¹⁵ m^-2) in the Ti alloy. The origins of the mentioned surface features differed in the two materials: an intense dislocation slip on parallel slip planes for the Ti alloy and mechanical twinning combined with dislocation slip for the austenitic steel.