Improving the fatigue strength of the elements of a steel belt for CVT by cavitation shotless peening

The elements of steel belts used for continuously variable transmission (CVT) are subjected to a bending load during operation. The weakest portion of the elements is at the root of the ‘‘neck’’ which works into metallic rings. In order to reduce the stress concentration, the root of the neck is rounded and the shape of element is optimized. Nevertheless, if the fatigue strength of the elements can be improved, the steel belt can be applied to larger engines. Although conventional shot peening is one way of enhancing the fatigue strength, it is very difficult for shot to reach into deep and narrow regions. Recently, a peening method using the impact produced as cavitation bubbles collapse has been developed [1–9]. This method is called ‘‘cavitation shotless peening (CSP)’’, as shot are not required [3–6, 8]. CSP can peen the surface even through deep narrow cavities, as the bubbles can reach these parts and collapse where peening is required. In the present article, improvement of the fatigue strength of the elements of a CVT metallic belt by CSP was demonstrated experimentally. Elements were treated with different processing times and evaluated by a fatigue test to find the optimum processing time. In order to evaluate the peening effect by CSP, the residual stress was measured. Note that this is the first report published on the improvement made in the fatigue strength of a part with regions that cannot be hit directly by shot. Cavitation shotless peening was applied to the element using cavitating jet apparatus, the details of which can be found in references [3–6, 8]. The jet was injected into the neck region through grooves in the elements, which were stacked and held together, and scanned perpendicularly over the elements, as shown in Fig. 1. The processing time per unit length, tp, is defined by the number of scans n and the scanning speed v; tp 1⁄4 n v ð1Þ