Effect of the nitriding potential on the layer growth kinetics of nitrided pure iron

In this work, an approach of reactive nitrogen diffusion is presented and applied to the iron gas nitriding process. A kinetic model based on Fick's laws is used to simulate the layer growth kinetics of a biphase configuration composed of epsilon and gamma' iron nitrides grown on the pure iron substrate. This diffusional approach, under certain assumptions, reveals the influence of the nitriding potential on the layer growth kinetics during the gas nitriding of pure iron. Some simulation results are presented and discussed.