St. Petersburg Mining University, St. Petersburg, Russia:

E. I. Pryakhin, Dr. Eng., Professor, Head of the Dept. of Materials Science and Technology of Art Products, e-mail: e.p.mazernbc@yandex.ru
A. V. Mikhailov, Postgraduate Student, Dept. of Materials Science and Technology of Art Products, e-mail: s195084@stud.spmi.ru
A. V. Sivenkov, Cand. Eng., Associate Prof., Dept. of Materials Science and Technology of Art Products, e-mail: sivenkov@mail.ru

One of the promising trends to increase the effective performance of steel parts working in conditions of simultaneous exposure to corrosive environment and abrasive loads is the use of surface alloying technology from the medium of fusible metal melts, allowing the formation of resistant diffusion coatings on their surfaces with the specified characteristics. Despite the fact that the mechanism of diffusion saturation from liquid-metallic medium has long been known, this technology is applied rarely in real industry due to the high cost of special vacuum units applied and the complexity of their operation and maintenance. Application of open heating devices does not allow to obtain defect-free smooth coatings - alloyed surface layers, because of the process of high-temperature oxidation of the items surface and the liquid-metallic transport melt. In previous studies, the concept of transport melt and workpiece protection through the use of hightemperature fluxes was proposed, however, despite the increased quality of the protected surface of the workpiece and transport melt, it was not possible to provide full protection from oxidation. Therefore, in order to increase the efficiency of protection against oxidation, this study proposes the combined use of high-temperature fluxes and purging the reaction chamber of the unit with inert gas. As a result the existing experimental unit was equipped with a protective gas supply system, which allowed to completely exclude the presence of oxide formations during the process of item heating in liquid metal medium and to obtain uniform, smooth and defect-free diffusion coatings based on Cr and Ni on the surface of 1020 steel samples, capable of providing increased characteristics of resistance to corrosion and wear.

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