Abstract
The effort to simulate the nitriding process has been ongoing for the last 20 years. Most of the work has been done to simulate the nitriding process of pure iron. In the present work a series of experiments have been done to understand the effects of the nitriding process parameters such as the nitriding potential, temperature, and time as well as surface condition on the gas nitriding process for the steels. The compound layer growth model has been developed to simulate the nitriding process of AISI 4140 steel. In this paper the fundamentals of the model are presented and discussed including the kinetics of compound layer growth and the determination of the nitrogen diffusivity in the diffusion zone. The excellent agreements have been achieved for both as-washed and pre-oxided nitrided AISI 4140 between the experimental data and simulation results. The nitrogen diffusivity in the diffusion zone is determined to be constant and only depends on the nitriding temperature, which is ~5 × 10−9 cm2/s at 548 °C. It proves the concept of utilizing the compound layer growth model in other steels. The nitriding process of various steels can thus be modeled and predicted in the future.
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Acknowledgments
The support of the Center for Heat Treating Excellence (CHTE) at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the member companies is gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks to Bluewater Reidsville and Bodycote Worcester for their support through facilities and experimental work.
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This article is an invited paper selected from presentations at the 26th ASM Heat Treating Society Conference, held October 31 through November 2, 2011, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and has been expanded from the original presentation.
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Yang, M., Zimmerman, C., Donahue, D. et al. Modeling the Gas Nitriding Process of Low Alloy Steels. J. of Materi Eng and Perform 22, 1892–1898 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-012-0368-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-012-0368-z