You must scan the entire strip to establish your peening intensity. Let's put some numbers into an example. Let's suppose you need a 10A intensity and the standard size A strip will not fit the tooth root, however you are able to fit strip into the tooth root that becomes only partially covered. Obviously this strip won't accumulate enough dents to curve properly so you need to continue with an experiment.
Expose a standard size A strip to the blast stream until you can verify that you have the parameters adjusted to achieve the 10A intensity. Next, you place an A strip in the blast stream that receives only partial coverage by using hard masking to shield the ends of the strip. This strip won't curve as much as the fully covered strip but is does curve enough to give you a "relative" reading. You must now perform your peening whilst achieving this new value or relative reading.
In the event that the masked A strip does not curve very much you might decide to substitute an N strip with hard masking on ends. It will exhibit more curving because it is thinner. Whatever its curvature measures will become you target value for process control. In essence you have correlated the curvature of two different strips when exposed to the same blast stream thus allowing you to fit a strip into your limited root space.
