Grit blasting is a low cost surface modification treatment widely used to enhance mechanical fixation of implants through increasing their roughness. As a result of the severe surface plastic deformation, beneath the surface it produces additional effects such as grain size refinement, work hardening and compressive residual stresses, which are generally evaluated with destructive techniques. In this research work, the blasting induced effects by Al2O3 and ZrO2 particles and their evolution after annealing at 700 °C were evaluated in 316LVM (Low Vacuum Melting) stainless steel specimens using two non-destructive thermoelectric techniques (NDTT), the non-contacting and contacting thermoelectric power measurements. Microstructural analysis and microhardness measurements performed beneath the blasted surface reveals that the non-contact NDTT results correlate well with the reversion of the α′-martensite developed during blasting, whereas the contact NDTT results are closely related to the grain size refinement and work hardening and the expected evolution of compressive residual stresses. Potential of these techniques to monitor subsurface changes in blasting processes and others severe surface plastic deformation techniques are clearly envisagedThis work was performed at UMSNH (Mexico) and CENIM-CSIC (Spain) with a partial funding from CONACYT (Mexico) under projects CB-80883 and MAT2009-14695-C04. H. Carreon wishes to thank CONACYT (Mexico) for the financial support during the sabbatical in CENIM-CSIC and S. Barriuso to CSIC for the JAE predoc.Peer reviewe
