Effect of Liquid Melt Nitriding Method on Steel’s Nitrogen Content

Various methods are considered for introducing nitrogen as an alloying component into steel in order to improve a set of metal mechanical and corrosion properties subsequently. It is noted that use of a high-temperature plasma makes it possible to affect the form of nitrogen present within a gas stream (molecular, excited, atomic). The last two forms are very actively absorbed by metal, and this makes it possible to obtain its required content within metal in quite a short time. Thermodynamic calculations are performed for assimilation of different forms of nitrogen by metal. A series of laboratory experiments for nitriding alloy steel 10Kh8NMVFB confirm the results of calculations for greater nitrogen solubility with plasma-arc melting.