This paper provides a conceptual basis of the development of a virtual process control design using smart simulation in the thermochemical surface engineering design for stainless steel. A historical review as a foundation of further development in attaining a smart simulation on low temperature thermochemical treatments is highlighted. Both scientific platforms and commercial explorations are suggested to thoroughly study the possibility of attaining a smart simulation on this material manufacturing related field. It is concluded that three essential stages of future works need to be performed: the construction of base points, model and simulation development, and advancement of simulation related to additive manufacturing to create a smart simulation in the industry 4.0 era.
Research development on mathematical modeling for thermochemical treatment especially in low temperature started from the empirical-based research which focused on conducting many experimental studies to gather metallurgical data. Several thermochemical treatments have been developed experimentally using various process parameters such as temperature, treatment time and gas compositions to understand the effect of certain factors towards the resultant layer. The availability of these experimental data was a crucial factor to obtain precise simulation of the diffusion process by thermochemical treatments in the stainless steels which can reduce the trials and errors of the experimental woks. However, the lack of the metallurgical data remains an obstacle to correlate the empirical and simulation-based research. The recent additive manufacturing research area is also an attractive challenge to generate a mathematical-based simulation of thermochemical treatments of additive manufactured specimen. In this paper, a historical review in connection with modeling development in low temperature thermochemical treatments is presented including the suggested future works to attain commercial software availability in progressive industrial development.
Austenitic stainless steel is a popular material for its corrosion resistant properties, however it has low hardness which limits its application. Low-temperature carburizing can be used to improve the mechanical properties of the austenitic stainless steel by producing expanded austenite layer. In order to get a high-quality layer and an efficient processing operation, the carburizing process must be optimized. In this research, a Taguchi method was utilized to investigate the effect of processing parameters related to the formation of the expanded austenite layer depth in austenitic stainless steel. Four factors were selected to be optimized namely temperature, gas flow rate, time, and gas composition with three levels each. L9(34) orthogonal array was applied with nine experimental tests to get the diffusion depth value of carbon in the expanded austenite layer. S/N ratio was used to determine the optimum factor combination with nominal-the-better quality characteristic and the most significant factor was obtained by applying the Analysis of Variance. Temperature was found to be the most significant factor with 54.91% contribution. The optimum combination was also successfully defined with temperature at 450°C (level 2), gas flow rate at 15 liter per minute (level 2), time at 12 hours (level 3), and gas composition at 15% CH4 – 5% H2 – 80% N2 (level 3). Clearly, in this study the Taguchi method was proven to be appropriately used as one of robust tools in optimizing the thermochemical treatment process parameters.
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