ROUGHNESS AND MICROHARDNESS CHANGES OF STEEL SHKH15 AFTER PULSED PLASMA FLOWS TREATMENT
10.25712/ASTU.1811-1416.2023.03.013
Keywords:
bearing steel, material hardening, pulsed plasma flows treatment, microhardness, roughnessAbstract
In modern industry, there is a need to modify the surface layers of bearing components made of ShKh15 to increase their service life. This effect is achieved by increasing the microhardness. Currently, the method of pulsed plasma flows (PPF) treatment is being actively studied. The limitation of PPF applicability in relation to bearing steel is the high requirements for the surface roughness of manufactured products. In this work, we studied the influence of PPF treatment modes on roughness and microhardness of ShKh15 steel by changing thermal load and number of pulses. The goal was to determine the optimal processing parameters allowing to obtain a combination of the highest hardening with the least change in roughness. According to the results, after PPF processing under certain parameters, it is possible to achieve 4-fold increase in microhardness. In addition, when the melting threshold is reached, samples roughness sharply rises. A number of experiments were also carried out to determine the influence of the number of pulses on the studied characteristics. During the ShKh15 irradiation with several pulses, it was found out that an increase in the number of impacts on the material provokes a decrease in microhardness due to a change in the quantitative ratio of the phases. The roughness index varies within 10-40 %, while fluctuations in values occur chaotically.