Surface Nanostructuring of Interstitial Free Steel by Wire Brushing

Abstract

The surface-severe plastic deformation (SSPD) has several advantages since many important properties such as fatigue, wear, corrosion, capability of coatings, dent resistance, etc. are directly influenced by the surface characteristics. Warm wire bushing is introduced here as a new, easy, and simple technique to perform warm surface-severe plastic deformation (SSPD). The process was modelled using finite-element method (FEM) to predict the required strain to attain the nanograins on surface of an interstitial free steel. The results show that warm SSPP at 350 °C resulted in a strain of about 3.6 required to form nanograins by SSPD. The SSPD carried out under the conditions predicted by simulation led to the formation of nanograins, 100±20 nm, within a surface layer about 50 μ m thick. The nanostructured layers were then characterized by using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques.