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Austempering as a Sustainable and Efficient Alternative to Qt-Treatment in Nitriding of Heat-Treatable Steels

SSRN, ISSN: 1556-5068
2024
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Article Description

Nitriding enhances surface strength of mechanical loaded steel components by forming nitrides, but achieving desired core strength requires a QT pre-heat treatment. Austempering, which is used as an alternative to traditional QT treatment in bearing applications, offers improved toughness with comparable hardness, potential energy savings, and reduced dimensional changes. The investigations are concerned with different bainitic pre-treatment structures on EN42CrMo4 and EN31CrMoV9 steels. Three austempering variants were explored for each, producing lower to upper bainite isothermally. Afterwards the specimens were nitrided to evaluate the impact of different pre-heat treatment microstructures on the characteristics of the nitrided layer. Compared to the tempered martensite formed during QT pre-heat treatment, the lower bainite provides similar hardness values and can be formed with shorter treatment durations and lower temperatures. The upper bainite positively affects hardening depth and compound layer thickness, but core hardness is lower, and treatment times can be economically disadvantageous for isothermal treatment in the upper bainite region.

Bibliographic Details

Stefanie Hoja; Martje Brandt; Rainer Fechte-Heinen; Martin Hunkel

Elsevier BV

Multidisciplinary; Surface treatment; nitriding; compound layer; hardening depth; austempering; bainite

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