Austenitic Stainless Steel Low Temperature Plasma Hardening Processing Research And Industrial Applications

Low temperature plasma surface hardening treatment of austenitic stainless steel is an effective process to improve the surface hardness of austenitic stainless steel without decreasing its corrosion resistance. This paper first introduces the different methods and research status at low temperature hardening treatment of austenitic stainless steel, and the low temperature plasma hardening processing equipment of austenitic stainless steel at home and abroad were reviewed and the corresponding description.This paper studies the effect of gas ratios and pressure in the furnace on the hardness and thickness of the carburized layer. Experimental results show that both gas radios and pressure in the furnace have a greater impact on the hardness and thickness of the carburized layer. The maximum hardness and the thinckest thickness of the carburized layer can be obtained at the hydrogen and methane ratio of 20:1 and the gas pressure of 400Pa.This paper, by using different low temperature plasma hardening treatment methods, such as plasma nitriding, plasma carburizing+nitriding, plasma nitrocarburizing, plasma carburizing of austenitic stainless steel surface hardening treatment, adopting the method of leading experimental equipment and scientific of austenitic stainless steel surface hardness of the hardened layer after low temperature processing, microstructure, hardness gradient and seepage layer thickness and the wear resistance and corrosion resistance are analyzed. The test results show that the plasma nitriding process has the highest permeability layer surface hardness, wear resistance and corrosion resistance is best, but the permeability layer is thinner, surface brittleness is poorer; the plasma carburizing layer has the lowest surface hardness, permeability layer the thickest, toughness, the best wear resistance corrosion resistance compared with the weak, but compared with the untreated to improve a lot; plasma nitrocarburizing permeability and plasma carburizing nitriding + performance is almost the same, but the former low processing temperature, toughness and corrosion resistance of the permeability layer are of great help, plasma nitrocarburizing permeability process combines high hardness of plasma nitriding and plasma carburizing high thickness and good hardness gradient.In this paper, on the basis of experimental optimization, the austenitic stainless steel plasma nitrocarburizing permeability treatment technology successfully applied to industrial production of austenitic stainless steel pin, the pin on the premise of not reduce its corrosion resistant performance, increasing its surface hardness, and the layer of brittleness, permeability layer thickness and salt spray test time completely reached the international advanced level, broke the foreign technology monopoly, reduce the processing cost of domestic pin production.