Abstract
Austenitic 316L stainless steel is known for its good resistance to corrosion and oxidation. However, under conditions of appreciable mechanical wear, this steel had to demonstrate suitable wear protection. In this study, laser surface alloying with boron and some metallic elements was used in order to improve the hardness and wear behavior of this material. The microstructure was described in the previous paper in detail. The microhardness was measured using Vickers method. The “block-on-ring” technique was used in order to evaluate the wear resistance of laser-alloyed layers, whereas, the potentiodynamic method was applied to evaluate their corrosion behavior. The produced laser-alloyed layers consisted of hard ceramic phases (Fe2B, Cr2B, Ni2B or Ni3B borides) in a soft austenitic matrix. The significant increase in hardness and wear resistance was observed in the case of all the laser-alloyed layers in comparison to the untreated 316L steel. The predominant abrasive wear was accompanied by adhesive and oxidative wear evidenced by shallow grooves, adhesion craters and the presence of oxides. The corrosion resistance of laser-alloyed layers was not considerably diminished. The laser-alloyed layer with boron and nickel was the best in this regard, obtaining nearly the same corrosion behavior as the untreated 316L steel.
Highlights
The main disadvantage of AISI 316L austenitic stainless steel is its relatively low hardness which causes the limited use of this material
Summarizing the results of the paper [63], it could be concluded that the fabricated laser-alloyed layers were characterized by a composite microstructure, which was composed of the hard ceramic phases in a soft austenitic matrix
Summarizing, the hardness of laser-alloyed layers with boron as well as with boron and selected metallic elements was lower, their averaging depths were significantly higher than the depths of the surface layers produced on austenitic stainless steels using other physical techniques and thermochemical treatments
Summary
The main disadvantage of AISI 316L austenitic stainless steel is its relatively low hardness (about 200 HV) which causes the limited use of this material. The only way to harden such a steel is via adequate surface treatment in order to produce hard and wear resistant surface layers It is relatively easy using the physical techniques of surface treatment, especially if the surface is saturated with nitrogen, carbon or boron under glow discharge conditions [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31]. The main problem is how to improve the tribological properties of the austenitic stainless steel without sacrificing its corrosion resistance
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