This version is available at https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/49507/ Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Unless otherwise explicitly stated on the manuscript, Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Please check the manuscript for details of any other licences that may have been applied. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/) and the content of this paper for research or private study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge.Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to the Strathprints administrator: strathprints@strath.ac.ukThe Strathprints institutional repository (https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk) is a digital archive of University of Strathclyde research outputs. It has been developed to disseminate open access research outputs, expose data about those outputs, and enable the management and persistent access to Strathclyde's intellectual output. Abstract. A surface engineering technique based on a Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) torch was used to melt single tracks on the surface of a micro-alloyed steel with a hardness of 150 HV. The influence of three shielding gases, argon, helium and nitrogen, on the microstructure and hardness of the resolidified surfaces was analyzed.
Effect of Shielding Gas on the Properties andIn all melting techniques, the heat generated by the source is normally conducted to the substrate ahead of the torch, and has been described as 'preheat'. This leads to a gradually higher substrate temperature, from the start to the finish of a melted surface track. The aim of this research was to analyze any inhomogeneities in the microstructure, due to 'preheat', which is rarely considered in the published literature. Three thermocouples were located along the melted track in order to record the temperature at three different points. An energy input of ~ 840J/mm was used in each experiment and the results show that the maximum temperature recorded by the last thermocouple, N o three (subjected to the preheat), for argon, helium and nitrogen gas was 590 ºC, 1120º C and 740 ºC respectively, where a difference of 150 ºC and 200 ºC was registered between the first and third thermocouples when using helium and nitrogen respectively. The corresponding hardness values were 170 HV, 162 HV and 225 HV, and the corresponding surface roughness values were 6 µm, 12 µm and 25µm. A decrease of almost 60% in the roughness value was observed between the initial and last stage of the melted track, when using argon as shielding gas.