The effect of the laser surface treatments on the wear resistance

In case of traditional surface-hardening processes (e.g. carburization), the wear resistance usually correlates with hardness, which means optimising these technologies could be based on testing the achieved hardness. In case of modern laser treatment technologies however e.g. surface melting combined with surface alloys or laser scanning surface treatment followed by nitridation it is unlikely to conclude wear resistance from the value of hardness. The reasons are the following: the hardness of surface melting combined with surface alloys (especially if alloyage is made using high hardness compound powders) depends on the remelting of the material and the particle size and distribution of the dispersed alloy. These same properties define wear resistance, but the values don't necessarily correlate. In case of a compound phase dispersion in a softer base material, we can have outstanding wear resistance with moderate hardness. (e.g. bearing metals) The case is similar with scanning treatment combined with nitridation, which results in complicated structures. Due to the above, it is possible that in order to optimise these aforementioned technologies, we have to rely on examining wear resistance. In order to back this statement, we show the results of two typical experiments concerning these technologies.