Influence of wear behavior on AISI 316 austenitic stainless steel material by salt bath nitriding process under dry sliding conditions

Austenitic stainless steels are very famous for their extraordinary resistance to corrosion, but they lack hardness. To overcome the above problem, several curing processes such as nitriding, carburizing, Carbonitriding, nitrocarburizing and Cyaniding are preferred. The AISI 316 austenitic stainless steel selected for this project work were divided into four specimens of dimensions 8 mm in diameter and 42 mm in length. Among the four samples, three were subjected to salt bath nitriding process for about 60 minutes, 120 minutes and 180 minutes at 570°C, respectively and one sample were kept untreated for comparing the results with the processed ones. Followed by case hardening, the samples were subjected to wear test using a pin-on disc machine at constant load and constant speed, 30N and 1000rpm, respectively. Then the hardness of the three specimens along with the untreated specimen were tested with a Rockwell hardness machine. All samples were undergonewith scanning electron microscopy (SEM) for microstructure analysis. And finallythe treated and untreated specimenresults were examined and compared.