Investigation on AISI 253 Stainless Steel by Gas Nitriding Process for Sustainable Applications

¹ Research scholar, Mechanical Engineering, Singhania University, Rajasthan, India.
² Mechanical Engineering, Gokaraju Rangaraju Institute of Engineering and Technologies, Hyderabad, Telangana, India.
³ Cosupervisor, Mechanical Engineering, Singhania University, Rajasthan, India
⁴ Supervisor, Mechanical Engineering, Singhania University, Rajasthan, India.

^* Corresponding Author - ramyasreekeerthi@gmail.com

Abstract

Austenitic stainless steel is highly valued in many industries due to its unique properties, which make it appropriate for various sustainable applications like wind turbine blades, solar panel components, biomass converter equipments. AISI 253 stainless steel were chosen for this research and gas nitrided were underwent at a low temperature of about 550°C. The samples were nitride for 8 hours of nitriding, the sample was found to move from austenitic to expanded austenite phase. Extending the nitriding time to 16 hours resulted in the formation of ferrites and an increasing concentration of nitrogen in succeeding layers. The specimens were carried out with nitriding for 24 hours. Cr-N phase were formed was This new phase contributes to increase in surface hardness. Wear loss and volume loss were analyzed from the wear test. In this work , there was considerable improvement in the wear resistance after 24hours of nitriding. The samples nitrides for 24 hrs also had high hardness of 1080Hv and had negligible wear, volumetric wear loss of the specimens. The microstructure and surface morphology analysis of the nitrided samples was carried out using scanning electron microscopy which helped in establishing the microstructural behaviour of the AISI 253 stainless steel.