Wear-Corrosion Synergy on Din-16MnCr5 Steel Under Nitriding and Post-Oxidizing Treatments

New results about the wear-corrosion synergy behavior of nitrided DIN-16MnCr5 steel immersed in a saline solution were obtained in this work. Tribocorrosion tests were performed on three different samples under ball-on-flat configuration: nitriding, nitriding plus post-oxidation, and untreated material using electrochemical polarization with an open-circuit potential in a 5% NaCl solution. The sliding wear tests in the presence and absence of corrosion were developed under 20 N of normal load, 2.5 mm of stroke length, 10 mm/s of speed, 100 m of total sliding distance, and Al₂O₃ balls of Ø = 4.8 mm that were used as a counterpart according to the ASTM G119 standard procedure. The results showed that the presence of a magnetite phase (Fe₃O₄) at the surface of the nitrided plus post-oxidation on DIN-16MnCr5 steel increased the wear-corrosion synergy around ~ 5 times with respect to the untreated samples, which provides a potential solution to reduce the degradation impact in mechanical components for navy military industry applications. However, the wear-corrosion synergy (T) contribution to volume removal is higher than wear-corrosion (∆W_C) by itself and also than the contribution of corrosion due to wear (∆C_W).