Abstract
Unwanted removal of carbon from surface may occur during laser surface processing of steels despite the short interaction time and thermal cycle. However, no attention is paid in literature to investigate this phenomenon systematically. This paper presents two different scenarios during laser surface processing of steels: complete absence of decarburization for an alloy steel but decarburization with depth up to 70 µm for a plain carbon steel, showing that alloying elements tend to retard decarburization process by reducing the mobility of carbon in austenite. Further analysis reveals that the laser-induced decarburization is dependent primarily on peak temperature and austenitization kinetics.
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