Modeling of Ion Beam Surface Treatment

The use of intense pulsed ion beams is providing a new capability for surface engineering based on rapid thermal processing of the top few microns of metal, ceramic, and glass surfaces. The Ion Beam Surface Treatment (IBEST) process has been shown to produce enhancements in the hardness, corrosion, wear, and fatigue properties of surfaces by rapid melt and resolidification. We have created a new code called IBMOD that enables the modeling of intense ion beam deposition and the resulting rapid thermal cycling of surfaces. This code has been used to model the effect of treatment of aluminum, iron, and titanium using different ion species and pulse durations.