Ab-Initio Studies on Carburization of Fe3Al Based Alloys

Fe-Al based alloys exhibit excellent properties but suffer metal dusting in carburizing atmospheres. Surface composition can be a determinant factor in the solution of this problem. We calculate in this work the C adsorption energies in the L21 Fe2AlX (X=Ti,V,Nb) structures and we study the influence of surface covering. Our results show the beneficial effect of Ti, suggesting that there could exist an activation energy to promote the incorporation of C in the subsurface layers when the surface is covered enough