Modeling Steel Surface Treating Processes – Nitridetool ©

NitrideTool © software has been developed to predict the microchemistry, microstructure and hardness profiles in nitrided quenched and tempered martensitic steels. This model relies on the computational thermodynamic development of alloy specific Lehrer diagrams for many of the boundary conditions. The kinetics of the model use experimental data to predict compound layer thickness and diffusivity in the diffusion zone  to calculate the nitrogen concentration and microhardness profiles. In this paper the fundamentals of the model will be presented and discussed. The application of the Holloman-Jaffe parameter to predict the microhardness profiles will also be presented.