Dry sliding wear resistance of low temperature plasma carburised austenitic stainless steel

A low temperature plasma carburising technique has recently been developed to engineer the surfaces of austenitic stainless steels to achieve combined improvement in wear and corrosion resistance. The resultant carburised layer is free from carbide precipitates and contains a single austenite phase supersaturated with carbon. In order to evaluate the tribological behaviour of the carburised layers produced on AISI 316 austenitic stainless steel, dry sliding wear tests have been carried out in the present work. Three carburised layers with varying thickness, ranging from 15 to 40 μm, have been tested using the pin-on-disc configuration. The results show that the hard and corrosion resistant carburised layers are effective in preventing surface plastic deformation, eliminating adhesive and severe abrasive wear. Under dry sliding conditions, all the carburised layers exhibit increased wear resistance by more than one order of magnitude and wear of the layers occurs in a mild micro-abrasion mode. The wear resistance increases with increasing layer thickness and hardness.