Plasma nitriding of AISI 431 steel: surface hardness - hardness profile [Nitruración por plasma del acero AISI 431: dureza superficial – perfil de durezas]

Abstract

The present research evaluated the effect of the nitriding time in plasma in the range of 5 to 15 hours, on the hardness profile of the cross section of stainless steel samples AISI 431; in addition to taking and differentiating the data on surface hardness, effective layer depth and nitride layer thickness. The nitriding process was by plasma, the process temperature was kept constant at 400 °C. The evaluated samples were machined (rolled and countersigned), and were left in one inch diameter and one inch in length. The times of 10 and 15 hours of nitriding time were obtained by accumulating time of 05 hours of nitriding per week; the hardness profiles were obtained by using the LECO model LMV-50V micro durometer; The ASTM E3-91 standard was used to collect the aforementioned hardness data, from these it was possible to determine that the maximum surface hardnesses are (1053, 1252 and 1327) HV_-0.01, for nitriding times of (5,10 and 15) hours respectively, the average effective layer thicknesses were (37.75, 33 and 28.75) μm; while the nitride layer thicknesses were (4.9, 7.03 and 10.7) μm corresponding to times of (5, 10 and 15) hours respectively. The hardness in the core after the nitriding treatment was kept in the range of (275-277) HV_-0.01. These values were determined by microscopic evaluation of the tested samples, the metallography reagent used was 3% Nital by electrolytic attack for 3 minutes in each case. The statistical analysis corresponded to Student's “t” tests, in the form of pairwise comparison, from which the non-significant difference between repetitions and the significant difference between the different levels of study were determined.