SIMULATION MODEL OF THE GROWTH KINETICS OF Fe2B LAYERS WITH CONSIDERATION OF THE BORIDE INCUBATION TIME EFFECT

Abstract

In this work, a mathematical model for simulating the thermochemical boronizing process is presented. The diffusion model used in this paper is based on Fick’s laws by solving the mass balance equation of the (FeB/Fe2B) interface. In this developed model, the effect of boride incubation times during the formation of Fe2B layers on Armco iron was considered. To demonstrate the validity of our calculations, the simulation results are compared with experimentally obtained data on borided Armco iron, which allowed us to verify the validity of the model. Therefore, a good concordance was observed when comparing the experimental parabolic growth constants taken from the literature with our simulated values of the parabolic growth constants from the present diffusion model. From this study, it has been found that the incubation time has a very important influence on the evolution of the kinetics of the boride layers.