Abstract
Surface treatments of engineering materials are important for serviceable engineering components. One of the thermo-chemical surface treatments of steel based materials is the boriding process. In this study, low alloy steel substrates were borided by pack boriding process at 900 °C. Experimental indentation tests were conducted on Dynamic Ultra-micro Hardness test machine, under applied peak loads of 800 mN, 1000 mN, 1200 mN and 1400 mN. To get the mechanical properties of FeB layers, the resulting load–unload test data of the samples obtained from the experimental indentation tests were analyzed and curve-fitted in Kick’s and Meyer’s law for the loading and the unloading part of the load-unload curve respectively. Then, a set of analytical functions that take the pile-up and sink-in effects into account during instrumented sharp indentation were solved using numerical methods. These analytical functions were defined within an identified representative plastic strain, εr, for the Vickers indenter geometry as a strain level that allows for the description of the indentation loading response independent of strain hardening exponent, n. The mechanical characterization of samples, finite element modeling was applied to simulate the mechanical response of FeB layer on low alloy steel substrate by using ABAQUS software package program.