• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.1861-1868
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• 1992

Laser beam hardening of 12%-Cr steel has been evaluated by using a continuous wave 3kW co$_{2}$ laser with a hardening mirror set. Experiment was performed on the hardening condition with a laser power of 2.85kW and travel speed of 1.0 and 1.5m/min. Multi passes have been also tried to find the hardening characteristics of partly overlapped zone. The black paint to use at high temperature was adopted to increase the absorptivity of laser beam energy with the wavelength of 10.6.mu.m at the surface of base metal. The microstructure of the hardened layers was observed by using a light microscopy, SEM and TEM. A fine Lamellar martensite formed in the hardened zones exhibits very high Vickers microhardness of 600Hv, whereas the tempered martensite distributes in the base metal with Vickers microhardness of 240Hv.It has been found that laser hardening with multi passes showed no significant drop of the hardness between adjacent passes.