Journal of Surface Engineered Materials and Advanced Technology, 2013, 3, 172-177

http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jsemat.2013.33023 Published Online July 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jsemat)

Effect of Carbonitriding on Endurance Life of Ball Bearing

Produced from SAE 52100 Bearing Steels
Karthikeyan Rajan, Vinod Joshi, Arindam Ghosh*
Research & Development, National Engineering Industries Ltd., Jaipur, India.
Email: *arindam.ghosh@nbcbearings.in
Received April 5th, 2013; revised May 6th, 2013; accepted June 1st, 2013
Copyright 2013 Karthikeyan Rajan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ABSTRACT
The present paper reports the unusual enhancement of endurance life of ball bearings subjected to carbonitriding treatment. The microstructure was characterized by scanning electron microscopy and correlated with hardness and X-ray
diffraction analysis. Endurance tests at 90% reliability revealed that the carbonitrided bearings exhibit nearly ten times
more life than the non-carbonitrided bearings. This is attributed to synergic combination of retained austenitic, fine
martensitic microstructure and ultrafine carbide precipitates obtained by carbonitriding treatment.
Keywords: Carbonitriding; Retained Austenite; Martensite; Endurance Test; Bearing Steel

1. Introduction
Rolling bearings of 21st century are expected to deliver
superior performance for prolong duration while operating under most hostile (ultrahigh speed and load with
insignificant lubrication) conditions [1]. To meet these
exponentially increasing service demands, bearing tribologists have constantly been exploring newer avenues
to improve the performance. The SAE 52100 steel, in
hardened and tempered condition with a predominantly
tempered-martensitic microstructure and appropriate amount
of retained austenite (RA) is strenuously developed as a
promising rolling bearing material for many automotive
applications. Owing to this synergic combination of fine
martensitic microstructure and RA, sufficient wear
(abrasion) resistance and mechanical (fatigue and tensile)
strength at ambient temperature are obtained.
Majority of the failures in rolling bearings are due to
rolling contact fatigue (RCF) and are defined as the mechanism of crack propagation caused by the near surface
alternating load cycle within the rolling-contact bodies,
which eventually leads to material removal by cracking
or pitting/delamination [2]. Recently, there have been
lots of researches in SAE 52100 steel to understand and
improve the resistance to RCF [2]. It can be noted that
the surface characteristics of the bearings greatly affect
the RCF, for all the fatigue failure initiates at the surface.
Engineering the surface condition to achieve desired pro*

Corresponding author.

Copyright 2013 SciRes.

perties is an inevitable solution to avoid/postpone the

failure.
Various surface chemistry modifications and coating
techniques have been employed by technologist to enhance the life of the bearing by preventing/postponing
the RCF and other commonly occurring defects in the
bearing. Among the techniques, carbonitriding (CN)
seems to be quite cost effective [1]. Recently, CN has
been extensively used to enhance the surface hardness,
wear, fatigue characteristics of metal and alloys [1]. The
process involves in penetration of C and N2 into base metal lattice at interstitial spaces, generating significant crystallographic compressive stresses [3]. It can be noted
that surface chemistry and residual compressive stresses
greatly influence RCF strength [4]. The CN provides a
range of parameters which can be optimized suitably to
get properties of interest.
In this investigation, attempt has been made to develop
CN treatment on SAE 52100 steel and evaluate the conventional ball bearings endurance life. The above effects
on CN have opened new opportunities for developing
bearings with improved RCF resistance.

2. Experimental Procedure
The average chemical composition of the steel was examined using optical emission spectroscopy-ARL FISONS 3460 Metal Analyzer (OES) analysis. The CN treatment is performed, which is, austenitization at temperaJSEMAT

Effect of Carbonitriding on Endurance Life of Ball Bearing Produced from SAE 52100 Bearing Steels

ture typically between 1073 - 1173 K (800C - 900C)

for 110 - 230 minutes followed by oil quenching at 333 353 K (60C - 80C) and tempering at 423 - 533 K
(150C - 250C). The schematic of temperature-time
cyclogram of employed CN treatment is shown in Figure
1. Following CN treatment metallographic examination
is conducted using scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
Specimens are etched with 2% nital for 20 - 60 s to obtain reliable metallographic images. Retained austenite
and phase analysis were conducted using X-ray diffracttion (XRD) PANalytical, Xpert Pro diffractometer with
a rotating Cu K radiation. The instrumental contribution
to peak broadening was subtracted before the RA analysis. Mitutoyo hardness tester-ARK-F1000 with load of
1000 g and a dwell time of 10 s was employed to determine the hardness and temper resistance characteristics
of the steel. The specimens for optical microscopy, SEM,
XRD and temper resistance were cut from outer (Figure
2(a)) and inner (Figure 2(b)) ring of the bearing after the

Figure 1. Illustration of various stages in temperature-time

cyclogram of the carbonitriding treatment with gas potential.

(a)

CN treatment. In endurance test, the bearings were subjected to high speed rotation (1000 - 11,000 rpm) under
heavy load (20% - 40% of dynamic load rating) with presence of oil lubrication. Vibrations and temperature are
the two important parameters that were monitored continuously during the test. ENKLO-68, HP oil is employed
as lubricant in endurance test.

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. Chemical Composition
The average chemical composition (in wt%) of steel
(from Spectra analysis) was found to be Fe: 95.91%, C:
1.12%, Mn: 0.43%, Si: 0.36%, Cr: 1.6%, S: 0.027%, P:
0.024%, Ni: 0.24%, Cu: 0.26%, Mo: 0.04%. It can be
seen that the compositions are reasonably close to the nominal composition of SAE 52100 steel [1].

3.2. X-Ray Diffraction Analysis

Figure 3 shows X-ray diffraction spectra of carbonitrided (plotted using black colour) and non-carbonitrided
(plotted using red colour) samples. It can be noted that
the carbonitriding treatment as resulted in formation of
nitrides and carbides based phases. In non-carbonitrided
sample the predominant phase is Fe (Cr, Mo) solid solution (PDF: 09-0050). Unidentified peaks are expected to
peaks of complex Fe-Cr based oxides. In carbonitrided
sample, Fe3C (PDF: 35-0772), -C3N4 (PDF: 50-0848)
and complex nitrides of Fe and Si were identified in addition to the matrix material. Formation of process-induced phases (Fe, Cr and Si based oxides) are also expected. It can also be seen the full width half maximum
(FWHM) appears to the reduced after the carbonitriding
treatment. This is attributed to the possible grain coarsening during the carbonitriding treatment. Process-induced phases (carbide, nitrides and oxide precipitates)

(b)

Figure 2. Schematic of bearing component: (a) Outer ring

and (b) Inner ring.
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173

Figure 3. XRD Diffraction spectra of SAE 52100 steel: carbonitrided material, non-carbonitrided specimen.
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Effect of Carbonitriding on Endurance Life of Ball Bearing Produced from SAE 52100 Bearing Steels

behave as dispersoids in the matrix leading enhanced

mechanical properties.

3.3. Scanning Electron Microscopy

The SEM micrographs of outer ring after CN treatment
are shown in the Figure 4. Presences of two different
phases are evident from the micrographs: fine martensite
and retained austenite. The micrographs of outer ring
(Figures 4 (a) and (b)) shows that the retained austenite
grain size at surface (~4 - 5m) is significantly higher
compared to core (<1 m). EDS analysis (Figure 5) of
the retained austenite (marked in dotted circle 1 in the
Figure 4) indicated the presence of Fe, Mn, and Cr.

The microstructure prior to quenching consists of ferrite matrix and coarse carbides (M7C3/M23C6) in these
steels. The volume fraction and nature of the carbides
depends upon heat treatment conditions [5]. The 52100
steels are quenched and tempered before usage and their
material properties are significantly influenced by the
characteristics of the carbides. Studies have indicated
that the uniform dispersion and fineness of carbides
(M7C3/M23C6) are ideal for improved mechanical properties [5]. Carbides are prevents the grain boundary sliding
and migration by pinning/strengthening the boundaries
[5]. It is to be expected that this change will cause an
increase in the dispersion strengthening brought about by
the carbides. XRD analysis of carbonitrided sample
(Figure 3) indicated the presence of carbides and nitride
precipitates and this is consistent with the SEM results
obtained at core (Figure 6). It can be noted that dissolution of carbides are envisaged at higher austenitizing
temperatures, leading to depinning of grain boundaries.
Similarly, decreasing the austenite transformation temperature of the steel with given carbon content will lend
to smaller size of carbide precipitates besides increasing
the number density of the carbides [6,7]. In addition, dislocation density increases with decreasing transformation
temperature, primarily due to the greater strain accompanying the transformation and because there is very
possibility for the dislocations to be annealed out during
the shorter time of transformation. It can be noted that
fraction of dislocation density is directly proportional to
the strength of the steel.

3.4. Micro-Hardness Analysis

The micro-hardness on surface was determined at 10
different areas in the specimen with the interval of 5 x,
where x is the length of the diagonal of the indentation.
The average hardness of specimen was found to 63.6
Figure 4. SEM micrograph of CN ball bearing outer ring
fabricated from 52100 steel, (a) at surface and (b) at core.

Figure 5. The EDS spectrum is from globular RA marked 1

in the image Figure 4 (a).
Copyright 2013 SciRes.

Figure 6. High resolution SEM image of CN ball bearing

inner ring fabricated from 52100 steel showing fine globular cementite.
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Effect of Carbonitriding on Endurance Life of Ball Bearing Produced from SAE 52100 Bearing Steels

1.3 and 61.2 1.4 HRc for carbonitrided sample and

non-carbonitrided sample respectively. Figure 7 shows
the variation in hardness (in HRc) along cross section of
CN steel and non-CN steel tempered at 573 K for 180
min and at 623 K for 210 min. It can be seen that the
hardness of CN steel is higher than that of non-CN steel
at all tempering temperatures. This is possibly due to
presence of fine precipitates of carbides and nitrides uniformly aggregated in the fine martensitic microstructure,
which act as obstacles to the motion of dislocations. In
addition, at the surface, drop in hardness of non-CN samples after tempering is higher compared to CN samples.
This is possibly due to coarsening of the microstructure
of non-CN samples; whereas in the case of CN samples
presence of fine carbides and nitrides stabilize the microstructure by restricting coarsening of grain boundaries.
Presences of the fine carbides and nitrides in CN samples
are quite evident from XRD analysis.
Figure 8 shows the plot of ln (hardness) vs. distance

from surface for CN steel tempered at 573 K for 210 min

and 623 K for 180 min. It can be seen that there is a
gradual decrease in the hardness up to ~0.5 m from the
surface after which there is no appraisable decrease in the
hardness. Figure 8 also shows a drastic slope change in
hardness at a particular distance, which is referred to as
transition zone in these steels. The transition zone indicates the case depth of the CN layer. It can also be
noted the value of the slope is related to microstructural
stability.

3.5. Retained Austenite

The martensite () (body centered tetragonal) structure
has a larger volume than the austenite () (face centered
cubic). Owing to this, ~4% volumetric expansion is observed during to transformation. At room temperature, heavy mechanical stresses favor the to
transformation, leading to distortion, crack initiation and
propagation. For this reason, amount of RA on the surface (after quenching and tempering) has to be appropriately optimized. It can be noted that the percentage of
RA in the quenched condition is directly proportional to
austenitizing temperature [8]. In this study, our austenizing temperature is 1113-1173 K (840C - 900C).
The measurement condition with regard to XRD is that
the scanning speed is 2/min and measured planes are
(200) , (220) , (211) and (311) . The
amount of retained austenite is estimated using intensity
ratio of (martensite) and (austenite). The volume
fraction of all carbides is given by
n

r
Figure 7. Hardness profile of CNed steel and non-treated
steel annealed at 573 K for 180 min and 623 K for 210 min.
(filled symbols corresponding to CNed steel and unfilled
symbol corresponds to non-treated steel).

Figure 8. Plot of ln (hardness) vs. distance from surface for

CN steel.
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175

1 n I

hkl

Rhkl

1
n

1 n Ihkl / Rhkl 1 / n Ihkl / Rhkl

1

(1)

where r is the volume fraction of all carbides in the material, Ihkl and Ihkl the integrated intensities of austenite and ferrite peaks, respectively, n and n the numbers
of (hkl) lines for which the integrated intensities have
been measured, and Rhkl and Rhkl are theoretical intensities [9]. Determination of phase volume fraction
using optical microscopy is unsuitable for phase
which do not exceed more than few microns. For accurate measurement, computer image analysis after colour
etching, neutron or X-ray diffraction and magnetic
methods are employed [9,10]. In Figure 9, the percentage of RA at the surface and core is shown as a function
of tempering temperature for the SAE 521000 steel. It is
observed in quenched condition ~55% and ~35% RA at
surface and core respectively and the rest is composed of
fine martensite formed during quenching. The increased
volume fraction of RA both at surface and core after
quenching to room temperature is attributed to the effect
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Effect of Carbonitriding on Endurance Life of Ball Bearing Produced from SAE 52100 Bearing Steels

Figure 9. Variation of percentage retained austenite at surface and core with tempering temperature, K.

of interstitial alloying element like nitrogen. It has been

shown in Figure 1 that the CN treatment has been done
with above A1 temperature in the presence of nitrogen
source (ammonia (NH3)), which greatly influence the
austenite stability at room temperature.
It can be noted that there is very minimal reduction in
the RA till ~400 K (~127C) above which reduction is
steep (Figure 9). It can be seen that saturation tread is
observed around 520 K (277C) at surface; however no
such saturation trend is seen at core. A distinct change in
the slope indicates strong temperature dependence of RA
(Figure 9). The value of slope indicate rate of RA to
martensite transformation. It is quite evident from the
values slope that RA at surface transforms faster compared to RA at core. It directly related to the poor thermal stability of RA at the surface compared to RA at core.
The goodness of the linear Recent investigation indicates
that the higher RA contents at the surface increase the
fatigue life of the bearing [11].

3.6. Endurance Testing

RCF life of bearings in dependent on many interacting
factors such as bearing materials, melting technique, material processing variables, lubricant system, elasto-hydrodynamic (EHD) film thickness, contact stress levels
and other environmental and operational effects [11]. Endurance testing is a global employed technique to evaluate RCF of the bearing. Figure 10 shows the comparson of endurance testing of non-carbonitriding and carbonitriding ball bearings. Five different sets bearing were
subjected to endurance testing. The target L10 life is denoted as x. It can be noted the all non-CN bearings
have failure due to fatigue after crossing the target L10
life. Surface roughness of the track (ball-path) is ~0.07
m. It is reduced to ~0.03 m after the endurance test. It
Copyright 2013 SciRes.

Figure 10. Comparison of endurance test of normal ball

bearing (non-carbonitrided) and carbonitrided ball bearing.
x-denoted the target L10 life.

is attributed to smoothening effect during the test. The

surface micro-asperities present in the ball-path gets flatten/smoothen owing to the high load in the presence of
lubricating oil. It can be seen the carbonitrided bearing
exhibit significant enhancement in the life (Figure 10). It
is attributed to the wear resistance characteristic of the
CN bearing surface. A presence of RA (>20% at surface)
aids in higher the RCF resistance by blunting the micro-crack and preventing the crack propagation. In addition, fine precipitates of carbides and nitrides increases
the stability of the microstructure, thereby increase the
wear resistance.

4. Conclusion
In summary, effect of carbonitriding on microstructure of
SAE 52100 steel revealed ultrafine carbides and nitrides
based precipitates. Case depth of ~0.5 m is observed
from temper resistance behaviour of carbonitrided steel
at 573 and 623 K. The dependence of the volume fraction
of retained austenite on the tempering temperature is demonstrated. The rate of transformation of retained austenite is faster in the surface of the component compared
to core. Endurance tests at 90% reliability revealed that
the carbonitrided bearings exhibit nearly ten times more
life than the non-carbonitrided bearings. This is attributed to synergic combination of retained austenitic, fine
martensitic microstructure and ultrafine carbide precipitates obtained by carbonitriding treatment.

5. Acknowledgements
Authors gratefully acknowledge the support of Ms.
Amathur Heat treatment Pvt. Ltd., Chennai in carbonitriding process. Karthik thankfully acknowledges Mr. N.
K. Gupta, Mr. Apoorv, Mr. Ayush Jain and Dr. Rajaram
for their support during characterization and discussion.
Authors gratefully acknowledge Mr. Anand Bapat, Mr.
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Effect of Carbonitriding on Endurance Life of Ball Bearing Produced from SAE 52100 Bearing Steels

Carburized Steel, Institute of Casting Problems, Metal

Science and Heat Treatment, Vol. 20, No. 11, 1978, pp.
927-930.

Srini Dumpur and Mr. Rohit Saboo for their encouragement and support throughout this research work.

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