Issue 78

N. Mohan et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 78 (2026) 129-145; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.78.08

Comparative study on dry wear and tribocorrosion behavior of boronized martensitic stainless steels

Nirupama Mohan, V. Bharathi* Dept., of Mechanical Engineering, B.M.S. College of Engineering, Bull Temple Road, Bengaluru -560019, KA, India nirupamamohan.mech@bmsce.ac.in, bharathi.mech@bmsce.ac.in S. Harish Dept., of Mechanical Engineering, SSIT, Tumkur-572102, Karnataka, India harishs@ssit.edu.in N. Santhosh Dept., of Mechanical Engineering, Dayananda Sagar Academy of Technology and Management, Kanakapura Main Road, Bangalore-560082, Karnataka, India dr.santhoshnagaraja@gmail.com Vinayak B. Hemadri Dept., of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering, Dayananda Sagar University, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India vinayak-me@dsu.edu.in Ningegowda B M Dept., of Mechanical Engineering, Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering (DSCE), Kumaraswamy Layout, Bengaluru 560111, Karnataka, India ningegowda.iitdphd@gmail.com

Citation: Mohan, N., Bharathi, V., Harish, S., Santhosh, N., Hemadri, V. B., Ningegowda, B. M., Comparative study on dry wear and tribocorrosion behavior of boronized martensitic stainless steels, Fracture and Structural Integrity, 78 (2026) 129-145.

A BSTRACT . The tribocorrosion behavior of boronized 13Cr4Ni and 16Cr5Ni martensitic stainless steels (MSS) in 3.5 weight percent NaCl is examined in this work. Samples were tempered at 600 °C for two hours and boronized at 950 and 1000°C for six hours. Hard surface layers ( ≈ 1680–1805 Hv) with case depths of 35-90 µm were generated by boronizing. Icorr increased from 0.6-0.9 µA/cm² (bare) to 4.3-8.1 µA/cm² (boronized) and then to 14.3-27.1 µA/cm² under tribocorrosion. Potentiodynamic polarization showed a shift in corrosion potential by around 200–310 mV toward more active values. The

Received: 05.05.2026 Accepted: 16.07.2026 Published: 12.08.2026 Issue: 10.2026

Copyright: © 2026 This is an open access article under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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