An investigation to wear characteristics, microstructure and X-ray diffraction of 316LN austenitic stainless steel resulting from low temperature plasma nitriding has been made in the present work. It was found that wear resistance of nitride specimens was related to the formation of a precipitation hardened layer on the austenitic surface. In the present research work, plasma nitriding was done at 550℃ for two different specimens for a time period of 10 hours and 20 hours. The formation of this nitriding treatment has improved wear resistance significantly. Wear track observation by SEM revealed heavy scars for untreated specimen. The wear tracks were compared with treated nitrided specimen and untreated specimen. Optical microscope results were also taken to compare the case depths.
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