The effect of boronizing heat treatment on the slurry erosion of AISI 5117

Purpose This paper aims to clarify the relationship between the slurry erosion and one of the case hardening treatments, i.e. boronizing in this study, for AISI-5117 steel alloy. AISI-5117 steel alloy was used because of its variety applications in the field of submarine equipment. Most of the slurry erosion factors such as velocity, impact angle and mechanism of erosion were studied at different impact angles. Design/methodology/approach At first, the samples were prepared and subjected to the boronizing treatment in controlled atmosphere. By using a slurry erosion test-rig, all experiments for studying the slurry erosion factors were carried out. Moreover, the studied specimens were investigated via scanning electron microscope, optical microscope and X-ray diffraction to study the erosion mechanism in the different conditions. Findings It was expected that the boronization of the AISI-5117 steel would increase its slurry erosion resistance due to its positive impact on the surface hardness. However, the results observed show the opposite, where the boronization of AISI-5117 steel decreased its slurry erosion resistance as implied by the increase of the mass loss percentage at all impact angles. Originality/value This research, for the first time, exhibits the effect of boronizing treatment on the slurry erosion in different impact factors accompanied by the erosion mechanism at each impact angle.