Surface Treatments and Coatings in the Steel-Making Industry: From Metallurgy to Processing

摘要

Surface treatments have long been the fruit of experience and sometimes an art; however, they are becoming fully controlled processes as they can be described using mathematical models. The detailed observation of surfaces through increasingly powerful analytical instruments open the way to the precise description of reaction mechanisms and to the metallurgy and physical chemistry of interfacial phenomena; the physical modeling of surface treatment reactions appears feasible. The description of reactors using classical chemical engineering techniques (instrumentation, cold models, CFD, and residence time distribution) opens new fields for optimizing the reactor geometry and for controlling the contact between reactive phases (boundary layer control for example). Surface treatment models may well develop along the following lines: 1. coupling between models (fluid dynamics and heat and mass transfer) 2. coupling between microscopic models describing the nucleation and growth of coatings, metallurgical or molecular simulation models and global reactor models 3. prediction of the coating properties from chemical engineering models. Such models introduced into operating guides will help to stabilize the operation of surface treatments under very precise processing conditions and therefore contribute to high standards of product quality.