Electron-Beam Surface Treatment of Metals and Alloys: Techniques and Trends

Stefan Valkov,Maria Ormanova,Peter Petrov

doi:10.3390/met10091219

Stefan Valkov, Maria Ormanova + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/met10091219

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Journal: Metals	Publication Date: Sep 10, 2020
Citations: 38	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Electronics

Abstract

During the last decades, electron-beam treatment technologies (EBTT) have been widely used for surface modification of metals and alloys. The EBT methods are known as accurate and efficient. They have many advantages in comparison with the conventional techniques, such as very short technological process time, uniform distribution of the energy of the electron beam, which allows a precise control of the beam parameters and formed structure and properties of the materials, etc. Moreover, electron-beam treatment technologies are a part of the additive techniques, which are known as modern methods for manufacturing of new materials with unique functional properties. Currently, modern trends in the surface treatment of metals and alloys are based on the combination of electron-beam technologies with other methods, such as thin film deposition, plasma nitriding, etc. This approach results in a significant improvement in the surface properties of the materials which opens new potential applications and can involve them into new industrial fields. This paper aims to summarize the topics related to the manufacturing and surface treatment of metals and alloys by means of electron-beam technologies. Based on a literature review, the development and growth of EBT are considered in details. The benefits of these technologies—as well as their combination with other methods—are extensively discussed.

Highlights

Due to the reduction of natural resources and continuous growth of the modern industry, the involvement of new technologies for the manufacturing of materials, as well as for modification of their structure and properties is of major importance
This paper aims to summarize the topics of electron-beam surface treatment of new functional materials and we present and discuss the techniques and trends of improvement of their structure and properties
The main idea of the combination of more than one technology is to combine their advantages. Such an approach was successfully introduced by the authors of [39], where a combination of plasma nitriding and subsequent electron-beam treatment was applied on samples of 40X steel

Summary

Introduction

Due to the reduction of natural resources and continuous growth of the modern industry, the involvement of new technologies for the manufacturing of materials, as well as for modification of their structure and properties is of major importance. The electron-beam treatment methods receive much attention and are already successfully introduced in many industrial branches, such as aircraft and automotive industries, for the manufacturing of space ships, railway cars, etc. [1,2,3,4,5,6] At these techniques, the materials are treated by a high-intensity electron beam. The technological conditions can be precisely controlled, which allows precise control of the structure and properties of the treated materials [9,10]. Some advantages of EBTT in comparison with conventional methods can be drawn as follows:

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