Introduction
An important aspect of the laser deposited coatings is dilution
of the clad layer, i.e., the mixing of substrate with clad material.
While a minimum dilution is necessary to guarantee a good
metallurgical bonding between clad and substrate, an excessive
dilution is undesirable, given the need to preserve the chemical
composition and properties of the coating.
There are a few papers on the detrimental effects of dilution on
hardness [1] and corrosion resistance [2] of Ni–Cr–B–Si–C alloys
deposited by welding techniques. The processing parameters of
laser deposition are usually adjusted to obtain very low levels of
dilution. But the heat accumulation during the laser cladding of
small parts or in cladding operations in which the heat can not be
conducted away in time due to geometrical limitations may
significantly increase the dilution and change properties of the
clad layer [3]. Our previous work showed that microstructure