Duplex surface treatment of an AISI 316L stainless steel; microstructure and tribological behaviour

Austenitic stainless steel AISI 316L is used in several industrial applications, mainly due to its excellent corrosion resistance; however, its low hardness and poor wear performance impose strong limitations in many cases. A combination of DC-pulsed plasma nitriding and plasma assisted PVD coating as a surface treatment has been shown to improve the material fatigue and wear resistance without affecting the corrosion performance. In the present work a duplex treatment, consisting of a plasma nitriding at 673 K for 20 h and a subsequent coating with a TiN layer was applied to an AISI 316L steel. The microstructure obtained as well as the tribological behaviour was extensively studied. Wear tests were performed in rolling-sliding condition under different loads (490, 1225 and 1960 N). Different wear mechanisms were observed depending on the normal applied load. Analysis and discussion of the wear test results showed that the combination of the two processes, plasma nitriding and plasma assisted PVD coating, improves considerably the wear resistance of the AISI 316L. At low applied loads, the duplex treatment improved significantly the wear resistance during the sliding/rolling contact, i.e. only abrasion was observed. However, upon increasing the applied loads fatigue and delamination wear mechanism appeared. In the case of the highest applied load, delamination was the main wear mechanism observed in the tested samples.