Past, Present and Future Development in Mathematical Modeling for Low Temperature Thermochemical Treatments of Stainless Steels for Enhanced Surface Properties

Abstract

Research development on mathematical modeling for thermochemical treatment especially in low temperature started from the empirical-based research which focused on conducting many experimental studies to gather metallurgical data. Several thermochemical treatments have been developed experimentally using various process parameters such as temperature, treatment time and gas compositions to understand the effect of certain factors towards the resultant layer. The availability of these experimental data was a crucial factor to obtain precise simulation of the diffusion process by thermochemical treatments in the stainless steels which can reduce the trials and errors of the experimental woks. However, the lack of the metallurgical data remains an obstacle to correlate the empirical and simulation-based research. The recent additive manufacturing research area is also an attractive challenge to generate a mathematical-based simulation of thermochemical treatments of additive manufactured specimen. In this paper, a historical review in connection with modeling development in low temperature thermochemical treatments is presented including the suggested future works to attain commercial software availability in progressive industrial development.