Effect of Boride Incubation Time During the Formation of Fe2B Phase

Our present study focuses on the numerical simulation of the boronized layer growth kinetics on the iron substrate of the XC38 steel, the boronizing treatment is performed in a liquid medium composed of borax and silicon carbide. We mainly calculated the incubation time of the boronized layer formation. Aimed at estimating the boronizing treatment kinetics of XC38 steel, we initially used experimental data. The study was conducted to determine the law of borided layers growth and estimate the boron diffusion coefficient in the Fe2B layer. The diffusion coefficient obtained from this experiment is: D Fe 2 B = 1 . 388 × 10 − 4 exp − 207 . 8 × 10 3 j RT m 2 s − 1 In order to calculate the incubation time of the Fe2B layer, we adapted the mathematical model, which is based on the second law of Fick. This model takes into account the thermodynamic properties of the Fe-B phase diagram. The comparison of the results obtained by the simulation with those obtained experimentally verifies the validity of the theoretical study and a good agreement was obtained as well.