Assessment of wear behavior on treated AISI 310 by liquid nitriding process.

Austenitic stainless steel is well known for its superior corrosion resistance, but they lack hardness. To overcome the above problem, several case hardening processes such as nitride, carburizing, carbonitriding, nitrocarburizing and cyaniding were adopted. Chosen for this research work, AISI 310 were taken for the following dimension 8mm diameter and42 mm length respectively. The specimens were undergone with aqueous soluted salt bath treatment for 70 minutes, 130 minutes, and 190 minutes at 570°C and were named as SBT 1, SBT 2, SBT 3 respectively. An untreated sample is used for comparing the results with the processed ones. The specimens were subjected to wear test using pin-on disc tribometer. A load of 20N was applied against a disc rotation at a speed of 1000 rpm. Measurements of hardness were done using a Rockwell hardness machine. All the specimens were undergone with Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) for microstructural studies. A comparison study is made between all the samples and the better wear resistant sample is chosen for the required application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]