This highly illustrated reference work covers the three principal types of surface technologies that best protect engineering devices and products: diffusion technologies, deposition technologies, and other less commonly acknowledged surface engineering (SE) techniques. Various applications are noted throughout the text and additionally whole chapters are devoted to specific SE applications across the automotive, gas turbine engine (GTE), metal machining, and biomedical implant sectors. Along with the benefits of SE, this volume also critically examines SE's limitations. Materials degradation pathways - those which can and those which cannot be mitigated by SE - are rigorously explained. Written from a scientific, materials engineering perspective, this concise text is supported by high-quality images and photo-micrographs which show how surfaces can be engineered to overcome the limits of conventionally produced materials, even in complex or hostile operating environments. This book is a useful resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as professional engineers.

Today's shortages of resources make the search for wear and corrosion resistant materials one of the most important tasks of the next century. Since the surface of a material is the location where any interaction occurs, it is that there the hardest requirements on the material are imposed: to be wear resistant for tools and bearings; to be corrosion resistant for turbine blades and tubes in the petrochemical industry; to be antireflecting for solar cells; to be decorative for architectural panels and to combine several of these properties in other applications. Surface engineering is the general term that incorporates all the techniques by which a surface modification can be accomplished. These techniques include both coating and modification of the surface by ion implantation and laser beam melting. In recent years a continuously growing number of these techniques were developed to the extent that it became more and more difficult to maintain an overlook and to understand which of these highly differentiated techniques might be applied to resolve a given surface engineering problem. A similar development is also occuring for surface characterization techniques. This volume contains contributions from renowned scientists and engineers to the Eurocourse the aim of which was to inform about the various techniques and to give a comprehensive survey of the latest development on this subject.

This volume covers both innovative and basic methods of surface engineering for improved surface properties.

Surface Engineering of Metals provides basic definitions of classical and modern surface treatments, addressing mechanisms of formation, microstructure, and properties of surface layers. Part I outlines the fundamentals of surface engineering, presents the history of its development, and proposes a two-category classification of surface layers. Discussions include the basic potential and usable properties of superficial layers and coatings, explaining their concept, interaction with other properties, and the significance of these properties for proper selection and functioning. Part II provides an original classification of the production methods of surface layers. Discussions include the latest technologies in this field, characterized by directional or beam interaction of particles or of the heating medium with the treat surface.