1. Materials used

The very principle of nitriding suggests that all materials capable of forming nitrides or carbonitrides are a priori suitable for nitriding. However, even if a few interesting applications have been described for titanium and its alloys , or more rarely for aluminum, nitriding is applied in industrial practice almost exclusively to steels and cast irons.

The influence of the main alloying elements is described in [M 1 223] . With the exception of nickel, their role is essential to the hardness and stresses obtained...