Journal of Materials Processing Technology 141 (2003) 189196

A study on friction and wear behaviour of carburized, carbonitrided and borided AISI 1020 and 5115 steels
B. Selc uka,*, R. Ipekb, M.B. Karams c
a

Engineering Faculty, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Cumhuriyet University, 58140 Sivas, Turkey b High Vocational Training College, Cumhuriyet University, 58140 Sivas, Turkey c Engineering Faculty, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Erciyes University, 38090 Kayseri, Turkey Received 25 June 2001; received in revised form 4 March 2002; accepted 29 October 2002

Abstract The friction and wear characteristics of AISI 1020 and 5115 steel surfaces improved by various thermochemical heat treatments such as carburizing, carbonitriding and boronizing were determined. Samples prepared from the test materials were treated at liquid and gases carburizing, gases carbonitriding and solid boronizing mediums. The hardness distributions, microstructures and X-ray diffraction studies were performed. The wear tests were carried out with pin-on-disc sample congurations and weight losses were determined as a function of sliding distance and applied load. The friction behaviours of tested samples were also examined. Thus, the heat treating capacity of a simple steel such as AISI 1020 was determined and compared with other treated steel samples. # 2002 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Wear behaviour; AISI 1020 and 5115 steels; Carbonitriding; Boronizing

1. Introduction Most of the engineering components subject to wear and they should be selected as suitable for using purposes. For effective use of steels in wear resistant applications, it is essential to improve the surface properties of steels with the most effective heat treatment. AISI 1020 steel is a low carbon and cheap material widely used in manufacturing of simple constructions and machine elements. The surface properties of this steel are usually improved by carburizing. On the other hand, AISI 5115 steel, which is an alloyed steel, is used for machine elements such as cam shafts, gears and other transmission elements after surface treated by carburizing or nitriding. If the AISI 1020 steel surface can be further improved by a thermochemical heat treatment such as carbonitriding [1,2] or boronizing [36], it can be used as gear drives, pump shafts, guide bars etc. [6]. The researches performed on carbonitriding show that the tribological properties of the low carbon steels can be improved by this treatment [1,2,69]. The hardness of the steel including 0.200.25 C% is increased from 720 to 940 HV by carbonitriding [10]. Boronizing is a thermochemical surface hardening process in which boron atoms diffuse into a metal surface to form
*

hard boride layers [5]. The boronizing process is technically well developed and widely used in industry to produce extremely hard and wear resistant surfaces. Since 1971, development in the eld of surface boronizing has made great strides. There are a number of methods for carrying out boronizing [11]. It should be noted that the trend in the past to replace high-quality steels by inferior ones and to imbue these with the corresponding properties through boronizing has not become established practice. As with other surface coating technologies, nowadays the typical steels required for the application are chosen and are boronized to provide them with extra protection. Large-scale boronizing was rst applied to drive gears for petrol-driven engines in 1979. Meanwhile, similar helical gear airs have long-since become standard ttings in vehicle and stationary engines [6]. The aim of the present study is to characterize the friction and wear behaviour of carburized, carbonitrided and boronized low carbon and alloy steels (i.e. AISI 1020 and 5115 steels).

2. Experimental procedure AISI 1020 and 5115 steels were selected as test material because they are widely used in different area of machine

Corresponding author.

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constructions with conventional surface treated such as carburizing and nitriding or induction hardening, respectively. The test samples were machined from the above materials in rectangular block shape with 20 mm 20 mm 30 mm dimensions and they were surface treated by various treatment methods such as carburizing, carbonitriding and boronizing. Treatment conditions are given in Table 1. For metallographic examination, some specimens were treated

together with the test samples under same conditions. The treated specimens were sectioned, mounted, polished and etched with 2% nital echant for microstructure examination. The surface phases and wear debris were also examined by X-ray diffraction method. The wear tests were carried out on a universal wear tester with pin-on-disc conguration. The counterface material was boronized AISI 8640 steel in disc shape with 30 mm

Fig. 1. Hardness distribution of the test materials treated with various methods: (a) carburized (930 8C, 3 h) and carbonitrided (860 8C, 3.5 h) steels, (b) boronized steels (950 8C, 1.5 h).

B. Selc uk et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 141 (2003) 189196 Table 1 Heat treatment conditions applied to test steel Material AISI 1020 Surface treatment Carburizing Carbonitriding Boronizing AISI 5115 Carburizing Carbonitriding Boronizing AISI 8640 Temperature (8C) Durations (h) Quenching temperature (8C) 840 840 840 840 Tempering temperature (8C) 200, 1 h 200, 1 h 200, 1 h 200, 1 h 850, 1 h

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Hardening medium Oil at 50 8C, 30 min Oil at 50 8C, 30 min Oil at 50 8C, 30 min Oil at 50 8C, 30 min Air

930, liquid 1.534 860, gas (12 m3/h 3.5 endogas 0.8 m3/h ammonia) 930950 1.53 930, liquid 1.534 3.5 860, gas (12 m3/h endogas 0.8 m3/h ammonia) 930950 1.53 1

Boronizing (counterface) 950

inner, 75 mm outer diameters and 12 mm thickness. Its maximum surface hardness is slightly above the hardest sample hardness (i.e. 2910 HV). The frictional forces were recorded and examined for frictional behaviours. Weight loss of the all samples were determined as a function of sliding distance and test loads. Weighing was performed with an analytic balance which has sensitive of 0.1 mg. Test durations were selected as 1030456090180 300420 and 540 s with the constant test speed of 3.6 m/s. The test loads were arranged from 50 to 355 N with increments of 50 N.

3. Result and discussion 3.1. Properties of the layers The present thermochemical surface heat treatments are widely used to improve surface properties of ferrous material for increasing wear, corrosion and fatigue performance

of the materials. To improve friction and wear properties, generally, the hardness of the surface should be increased. The hardness distributions of the test materials are plotted in Fig. 1. It was not possible to accurately measure the microhardness of the dark and bright needles in the boronized samples because of the neness of the structure. It is clear that the boride layer has the highest hardness with the shallowest case depth. The microhardness data indicated that there is a gradual decrease in hardness from the surface of the boride layer towards the interface. It is fact that, generally, the treatment durations and temperatures increase the case depth of material treated depending on diffusion process. On the other hand, the surface hardness depends on compounds produced with iron or alloying elements in diffusion zone. The low grade boron Fe2B phase which can be conrmed by the following X-ray diffraction analysis (Fig. 2) is especially desirable for industrial applications. The Fe2B phase observed in boride layer is the most hard among the others, i.e. martensite, iron carbide or iron nitride [e-Fe (N, C), g-Fe4 (N, C)]. Therefore the hardest layer is

Fig. 2. X-ray diffraction pattern of boride layer of 5115 steel (Cu Ka-ray) and Fe2B phase recorded by X-ray diffraction method in wear debris (Cu Ka-ray).

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Fig. 3. Microstructure of treated layers: (a) boronized layer at 950 8C, for 1.5 h; (b) carbonitrided layer at 860 8C, for 3.5 h.

obtained on boronized surface (i.e. 2700 HV for 1020 and 2861 HV for 5115 steels). The microstructures of the treated layer can be seen from Fig. 3. The boride layer with 6080 mm depth exhibits characteristic saw tooth morphologies similar to each other obtained on the surface of AISI 1020 and 5115. Although the carburized 1020 and 5115 steels have typical martensite structure, carbonitrided steels have carbonitride compounds caused by nitrogen in the nitrocarburizing atmosphere. In the

austenitic carbonitrided layer, the nitrogen austenite phase decomposes in a discontinuous manner on a ne scale to ferrite and Fe4N, with the precipitation occurring on both grain boundaries [11]. Boronizing of steels is greatly inuenced by the alloying elements present, such as C, Cr, Mn etc. Carbon, the most important alloying element, is not incorporated in tooth boride layer. As a result, it is pushed along in front of the layer into the substrate. The boron cementite, Fe3 (C, B) can

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replace up to 80% of the carbon by boron at 1000 8C but only 60% of it at 700 8C. Chromium replaces iron to form (Fe, Cr)B and (Fe, Cr)2B. The incorporation of chromium into the phases serves to increase the hardness considerably. The higher the chromium content of matrix, the more the boron prefers to diffuse along the grain boundaries. If the material include manganese, the manganese concentrations in the boride layer gradually increases and its greatest nearer the matrix [36]. The test samples have low carbon. Therefore, the properties of the boride layer are not affected considerably from carbon content. However, AISI 5115 steel have l.l% Cr and 1.25% Mn. Therefore, the layer thickness of this steel is shallower than that of 1020 steel. The hardness produced on the 5115 steel is 820 HV with core hardness of 460 HV after carbonitriding. On the other hand, carburized 5115 steel have 795 HV hardness value with core hardness of 375 HV. After carbonitriding, the nebainite formation increases signicantly the matrix hardness and chromium provides nitrides increasing the hardness. Therefore, carburized 5115 steel shows the lower hardness value than that of carbonitrided one. But, carburized and carbonitrided 5115 steels have approximately same hardness distribution from 200 to 510 mm case depths. The hardness of carbonitrided 1020 steel is 743 HV which is above the hardness value of carburized 1020 steels. It is observed that carbonitriding is a more effective process than carburizing for low carbon and low alloyed steel. Because 1020 steel provides the hardnesses of 616 HV with carburizing. On the other hand, the surface hardness of the carbonitrided 1020 steel is slightly lower than that of carbonitrided 5115 steel (i.e. 77 HV). However, it is higher

127 HV value than carburized itself. It can be seen from Fig. 1a that the hardness distribution of carbonitrided 1020 and carburized 5115 steels are friendly to each other with some differences. This is a good result for practical applications and gives a benet from economical point of view. Although carburizing develops deeper case with lower surface hardness, the case, sufcient to ensure good tribological properties with higher surface hardness and shallower depth, is produced by carbonitriding. The details of the layer properties of carburized and carbonitrided present steels are given elsewhere [1]. The surface parameter, Ra, measured on the samples is close to etcher other and Ra is changed between 0.34 and 0.52 before wear test. After wear test, it is increased to 0.612.23 but untreated samples are not evaluated. Any strong evidence is not found to relate between the surface treatment methods and the surface roughness for the steel type used in this study. 3.2. Friction and wear behaviours Friction behaviours of the test material are plotted in Fig. 4. It is known that the friction force or coefcient are increased rapidly in running in period of friction. However, this period is very short and severe wear are occurred at this period. After this period, friction force decreases to nearly constant value with small changing. Friction coefcients obtained under the same conditions are arranged at 0.45 0.62 for carburized, 0.360.57 for carbonitrided and 0.36 0.62 for boronized AISI 1020 steels, and 0.350.70 for carburized, 0.320.54 for carbonitrided and 0.120.24 for

Fig. 4. Coefcient of friction recorded as frictional force during the tests (sliding distance: 600 m, test speed: 3.6 m/s).

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Fig. 5. Variation of the weight loss with sliding distance (load: 100 N).

Fig. 6. Relationship between weight loss and test load (sliding distance: 1500 m).

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Fig. 7. Optical micrographs of worn surfaces frictioned for 300 s at 109 N loads: (a) boronized AISI 5115 steel (400), (b) boronized AISI 1020 steel (400), (c) carbonitrided AISI 1020 steel (500).

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boronized AISI 5115 steels. As it can be understood that the lowest friction coefcient is occurred with boronized 5115 steel. This steel is followed by carbonitrided 5115, carbonitrided 1020, boronized or carburized 1020 and carbunized 5115 steels. These are evident that the frictional coefcient depends systematically on surface hardness. However, it can be mentioned as a general rule that the coefcient depends strongly on surface roughness and applied load [10,12]. It can be seen from Figs. 5 and 6 that weight loss of the test steels were increased with test time and load. Untreated samples show the same character with treated samples by sliding distance of 900 m, except for carbonitrided 1020, but the weight loss of the samples are lower than that of untreated ones. After sliding distance of 900 m, wear speed is decreased for above steels. The weight loss of carbonitrided 1020 and 5115 steels are lower than those of carburized ones and higher than those of boronized ones. This situation is valid for weight loss with test load. Boronized samples have a wear resistance of 510 times higher than that of carburized samples (Figs. 5 and 6). Boronized steels are extremely resistant to abrasion and adhesion on account of their great hardness. The boride layers have low welding tendency [6]. This property is of great consequence for adhesive wear and explains why boronized samples show higher wear resistance. The clear superiority of boride layers over other treatments in terms of resistance to wear, particularly at high temperatures [3,6], can be seen from present results. The X-ray diffraction result is the same in Fig. 2 and any oxide particles were not observed in wear debris. This is an evident for boronized layer resistant to high friction temperatures. On the other hand, unfortunately, boronized layers are cracked by heavy loads due to the its higher hardness (Fig. 7a). This aked layer particles change the wear mode from adhesive to abrasive. It can be seen from Fig. 7b, there are some wear track parallel to the rolling direction. This wear tracks are shallower on the carbonitrided samples and some oxide particles adhering to the surface can also be seen on this layer.

steels. Therefore, this treatment is more useful than carburizing treatment for this steel subject to wear. However, effective case depth, which is equal to depth of 500550 HV hardness values, is deeper with carburized steel than carbonitrided one. 2. Carbonitrided low carbon steels may be used for the constructions in which carburized alloyed steels are used. Thus, an economical benefit can be provided. 3. Boronizing is the most effective thermochemical treatment for all ferro materials. But, the boronized layers are shallow and brittle. Therefore, boronizing provides excellent wear resistance under only light loads. This treatment can be applied to all steel but particularly to low alloyed steels. 4. Boronized low carbon steels can be used instead of carburized or carbonitrided low alloyed steels to be worked under light load frictions.

References
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4. Conclusions The conclusions derived from the present study can be summarized as follows: 1. Carbonitriding treatment is an effective surface hardening method for low carbon and low alloy cold working