Improving the surface properties of A286 precipitation-hardening stainless steel by low-temperature plasma nitriding

Plasma nitriding over a wide range of treatment temperatures between 350 and 500 °C and time from 5 to 30 h on A286 austenitic precipitation-hardening stainless steels has been investigated. Systematic materials characterisation of the plasma surface alloyed A286 alloy was carried out in terms of microstructure observations, phase identification, chemical composition depth profiling, surface and cross-section microhardness measurements, electrochemical corrosion tests, dry sliding wear tests and corrosion-wear tests. Experimental results have shown that plasma nitriding can significantly improve the hardness and wear resistance of A286 stainless steels owing to the formation of nitrogen supersaturated S-phase; the surface layer characteristics (e.g. microstructure, case depth and hardness) of the plasma surface alloyed cases are highly process condition dependent and there are possibilities to provide considerable improvement in wear, corrosion and corrosion-wear resistance of A286 steel.