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Yunlong Bai,Yikun Luan, Nannan Song, Xiuhong Kang† , Dianzhong Li and Yiyi Li
Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang
110016, China
[Manuscript received March 14, 2011, in revised form December 21, 2011]
The industrial manufacture processes of three kinds of roll core used ductile irons have been investigated
via systematical experiments. Effects of the ratio of C/Si, pig iron, nodularizer and alloying method on the
microstructure and mechanical properties of the heavy section ductile iron have been analyzed. It has been
found that when treated with RE-Mg plus Sb, high quality nodular castings can be produced even if much
anti spheroidizing alloy elements are included in the pig iron. The alloy element Sb played an important role
in the control of graphite morphology.
KEY WORDS: Centrifugal casting; Roll; Heavy section ductile iron; Micro-alloying with Sb
Pig iron is the primary raw material for producing tio of Ductile iron II is between those of the other two
ductile iron. Pig iron contains such interferential mi- kinds of ductile iron. RE-Mg alloy is used for Ductile
croelements as As, Sn, Sb, Pb, Bi, Ti and Te that all of iron II; Ni, Cr and Mo alloy is used for strengthening
which have bad influences on spherification of ductile the matrix so as to improve its strength and hard-
iron. During the production process of heavy-section ness. Meanwhile, in order to avoid large amount of
ductile iron these interferential elements should be carbides, the amount of inoculated silicon has been
eliminated as drastically as possible[12,13] . Due to the increased.
resource scarcity in high-quality pig iron in China,
2.2 Experimental scheme
the provision of high-quality materials remains to be
a problem which impeding the development of domes- Under the real production conditions of the fac-
tic rolling industry. Therefore, techniques mentioned tory, the scheme shown in Table 2 is adopted. In the
above will increase production cost and the mismatch experiment, two kinds of pig iron are used. Pig iron
of some techniques will not lead to desirable outcomes. (a) is of high-quality with a microelement average of
This study, by using average-quality pig iron and low- 0.065%. While, pig iron (b) is of average-quality with
price alloy, focuses on the control technique for the a microelement average of 0.186%. In Table 2, M
prevention of degradated spheroidisation and inocula- stands for Fe-Si-Mg+Ni-Mg nodulizer and R stands
tion fade to produce high-quality heavy-section duc- for RE-Mg nodulizer. In experimental scheme E, as
tile iron. The main aim of this study is to find a sound to ductile iron III, before pouring, a small amount
process of producing heavy-section ductile iron used of melted iron is dropped into the cold rinse bank to
for centrifugal casting rolls via the chemical compo- obtain quenched samples, which are used to examine
sitions, microstructure and mechanical properties of the nuclei and growth of graphite in its early growth
the ductile irons. period. The quenching samples contain 0.02% Sb as
the same weight added into the melted iron during
2. Experimental the later period of spheroidization. Spheroidization
2.1 Design of chemical composition treatment is adopted at about 1520–1530 ◦ C after the
desulfurization of the original melted iron. The period
The chemical compositions of the ductile irons from the beginning of speheroidization to pouring is
used in this work are shown in Table 1. In order 20–22 min. Pouring temperature is 1410–1420 ◦ C and
to prevent graphite flotation, hypoeutectic compo- stream inoculation technique is adopted during the
nents are chosen for the three chemical compositions, pouring process. Annealing treatment is adopted for
and silicon-carbon ratio is controlled with the proxim- rolls and simulated specimens (scheme B in Tables 2
ity in carbon equivalent values. High-silicon-and-low- and 3). Annealing temperature is 650 ◦ C. Tensile, im-
carbon principle is adopted in Ductile iron I. It has pact and metallographic specimens are obtained along
the largest silicon-carbon ratio among the three kinds the circumference line with a diameter of Φ310 mm
of ductile iron. The content of the alloy elements is and in the range of 180–300 mm to the end along the
controlled so that there is a certain amount of ferrite axial direction.
in the matrix of the ductile iron which will increase
the plasticity and thus resist the transformation stress 3. Results and Discussion
as well as the thermal stress. Fe-Si-Mg and Ni-Mg al- 3.1 Microstructure
loys are used as nodulizers in order to obtain spherical
graphite with high roundness. The silicon-carbon ra- After being ground and polished, the samples were
Y.L. Bai et al.: J. Mater. Sci. Technol., 2012, 28(9), 853–858. 855
etched with 2% nitric acid alcohol solution. Mi- while the spherical graphite is mainly distributed on
crostructure analysis was carried out by optical the ferrite matrix. Most of the graphite is spherical,
microscope. Figs. 1–4 show the microstructure together with some chunky graphite. The matrix of
of the roll neck and the simulated specimens, in the ductile iron made of average-quality pig iron is
which Figs. 1(a)–4(a) show general morphologies and mainly ferrite. The graphite is chunky. Hence, it is
Figs. 1(b)–4(b) the details of the carbide or graphite difficult to get a good spheroidization result in Duc-
in different ductile irons. From Figs. 1 and 2, it can tile iron I spheroidized by Ni-Mg when the pig iron
be seen that the quality of the pig iron affects the has a high content of intereferential elements.
morphology of graphite. The matrix of the ductile Fig. 3 shows the microstructure of Ductile iron II
iron made of high quality pig iron is composed of fer- made of high-quality pig iron. The matrix of duc-
rite and pearlite, as shown in Fig. 1. Statistical tests tile iron II is pearlite. After statistical analysis, the
have been carried out on ten images for this sample. fraction of cementite is more than 10%, due to the ad-
The tested fraction of the cementite is less than 5%, dition of carbide forming elements Cr, Mo, etc.. RE
856 Y.L. Bai et al.: J. Mater. Sci. Technol., 2012, 28(9), 853–858.
Fig. 7 SEM photographs of the spherical graphite in Scheme E, (a) graphite centre, (b) EDS analysis at the
center, (c) graphite fringe, (d) EDS analysis at the fringe
858 Y.L. Bai et al.: J. Mater. Sci. Technol., 2012, 28(9), 853–858.
Based on the Spiral Growth Model proposed by (4) The experimental results indicate that with the
Double and Hellawell[24] , spherical graphite is poly- addition of Sb to the liquid metal at a proper time, Sb
crystal made of many pyramid single crystals which will be adsorbed on the datum plane of the graphite
grow radially from graphite nuclei. The datum plane pyramid to form a film at the surface of the spheri-
of the graphite pyramid is vertical to the radial direc- cal graphite. The film influences the nucleation and
tion of the graphite sphere. The surface of the spheri- growth of the spherical graphite, which can result in
cal graphite is enclosed by the datum planes of all the fine graphite with higher spherical as compared with
pyramids around. Results from SEM show that Sb that in the ductile iron nodulized by Ni-Mg.
stays on the datum planes of the pyramids, i.e. the
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