| Due to their advantages of abundant resources, low cost, easy workability, stable quality and promising comprehensive mechanical properties, iron and steel materials have been widely used in various engineering fields. However, friction and wear, corrosion which usually occur on the surfaces of iron and steel components can lead to degradations in both properties and performance on their surfaces, and then may result in completely failures of the entire components. Surface treatment technologies have long been applied to improve the service performance of iron and steel materials with great success. Double glow plasma surface alloying (DGPSA) which was inspired by accidental phenomena during the plasma nitriding trials of iron and steel materials in 1980s, has been confirmed as an effective approach to provide satisfactory surface protection and strengthening of metallic materials. DGPSA can realize surface alloying by both non-metallic elements and solid metallic elements as alloying elements to create a strong/gradient metallurgical bonding between the alloyed surface and the substrate. This review began with a brief introduction of DGPSA. The research progress in strengthening surface performance of iron and steel materials by DGPSA process were reviewed and summarized in the sight of various acquired properties. |
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