An improvement of the surface properties of austenitic stainless steels and nickel‐based alloys is obtained by low temperature plasma assisted nitriding (PAN), plasma assisted carburizing (PAC) and plasma assisted nitrocarburizing (PANC). At low temperature, PAN treatment produces a peculiar phase usually called expanded austenite, S phase, m phase or γN phase. Replacing nitrogen by hydrocarbon for conducting a low temperature PAC gives a carburized layer containing the carbon expanded austenite phase (γC). These two phases can simultaneously be obtained by combining hydrocarbon and nitrogen in the gas phase through a low temperature PANC. Several fundamental aspects concerning the expanded austenite phases are presented in this paper.

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Self-stressing concrete is sort of expansive concrete with high expansion energy which can induce prestresses with restriction in concrete, and steel fibers also enhance tensile strength of concrete. The combination of these two high performance concrete can be used to improve the cracking resistance of concrete significantly. However, like mechanical prestressed concrete, a stable long-term prestresses (self-stresses) level is a key to exploit the particular advantage of steel fiber reinforced self-stressing concrete. Self-stresses are created by restricting the expansion of self-stressing concrete with steel bars or/and steel fibers, therefore, in this paper a series of tests on long-term expansive deformation of concrete were carried out by means of measuring restrict expansive deformation of self-stressing concrete with restriction of steel fibers. The results of tests showed, based on the three-year recording, that the expansive deformation of steel fiber reinforced self-stressing concrete almost kept the same as that of 28-day without remarkable rebound which indicated that losses of self-stresses were not significant and can meet the design requirements on self-stresses level. In addition, it is proposed on the relationship between restrict expansive deformation and reinforcement ratio of steel rebars under different steel fiber volume fraction from 0-2%.