Title: Improvement of surface layer properties of some constructional steels induced by applying thermodiffusional duplex treatment

Authors: Dragomir Krumes; Mirko Stubičar; Ivica Kladarić; Andrijana Milinović; Catalin Ducu

Addresses: Material Engineering Department, Mechanical Engineering Faculty, Slavonski Brod, Trg I.B. Mažuranić, 35 000, Slavonski Brod, Croatia. ' Department of Physics, Zagreb, Faculty of Science, Bijenička c. 32, P.P. 331, 10002, Zagreb, Croatia. ' Material Engineering Department, Mechanical Engineering Faculty, Slavonski Brod, Trg I.B. Mažuranić, 35 000, Slavonski Brod, Croatia. ' Material Engineering Department, Mechanical Engineering Faculty, Slavonski Brod, Trg I.B. Mažuranić, 35 000, Slavonski Brod, Croatia. ' Research Center for Advanced Materials, University of Pitesti, Targul din Vale 1, 110040, Pitesti, Arges, Romania

Abstract: The contribution deals with the preliminary results obtained in investigation concerning application of the duplex treatment to the low-carbon and low-alloyed steel samples (C45E, C15E, 42CrMo4 and 20MnCr5). The duplex treatment included boronising (at 900°C for 4 h in Ekabor 3 powder) and subsequent plasma nitriding processes (at 520°C for 40 minutes, 30 vol% nitrogen and 70 vol.% hydrogen, using PN-Mono 5 unit). In this study, the case and core properties of treated steels have been investigated experimentally by using: optical microscopy and SEM observations, X-ray diffraction analysis and measurements of microhardness profile on the cross-section of the treated steel samples. The results obtained by the above techniques are mutually consistent, and they are in agreement with the findings obtained by other researchers.

Keywords: boronising; plasma nitriding; duplex treatment; surface layers; construction steels; low carbon steel; microhardness; surface improvement.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMMP.2011.043577

International Journal of Microstructure and Materials Properties, 2011 Vol.6 No.5, pp.425 - 434

Published online: 09 Nov 2011 *

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