Glow discharge plasma nitriding of low alloy steel

Abstract

Present study concerns with the effect of plasma nitriding on hardness of low alloy steel. Plasma nitriding had been performed at elevated temperature of 500 C which improved the hardness to 1200 Hv. The case depth was found to be 80 mm. With the variation of time the case depth also varied. The plot of the square of the case depth vs. nitriding time and the corresponding line drawn by a linear regression and extrapolation passes almost through the origin. From the plot the nitrogen diffusion co-efficient calculated to be 2.23 10 13 m2/s. The structural and morphological studies have been made by following the X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopic (SEM) and EDS analyses. XRD revealed the presence of a-Fe, c0 and e phases.