Structural and phase transformations in surface layers of steels under sliding friction

Abstract

Model concepts of thermal shock in the continuous approximation (a continuum) and on the lattice scale, which occurs under the lubricated sliding friction of steels, are considered. It has been shown that thermal shock results in high pressures that propagate in surface layers of steels as extension-compression waves. It has been established that these waves induce both diffusionless (polymorphous) transformations and an anomalously high rate of diffusion mass transfer at temperatures below temperatures of kinetic transformations of the temperature-concentration phase diagram. The values of the pressures and the coefficients of diffusion have been calculated.