PRODUCTION OF AUSFERRITE NANOSTRUCTURE IN ALLOY AND NON-

ALLOY DUCTILE CAST IRON

Mateo Montoya Mejía1, a, Ricardo E. Aristizábal1,b, Harold D. Machado1,c

1 Calle 67 #53-108, Bloque 18, oficina 240, GIPIMME, Department of Metallurgical

and Materials Engineering, University of Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia.
amateo.montoyam@udea.edu.co,bharold.machado@udea.edu.co,
cricardo.aristizabal@udea.edu.co,

Austempered ductile cast iron (ADI) is a material with exceptional mechanical

properties with potential applications in the automotive, agricultural and mining
industries. The microstructure of ADI consists on well formed graphite nodules in a
matrix of ausferrite (bainitic ferrite + higt carbon austenite),In this ductile iron, the
ausferritic matrix is obtained by the austenitising and austempering treatment
carried out under the specific conditions of time and temperature. For this work it
was studied the effect of the parameters of the austempering process for the
production of bainitic ferrite nano-structured in two as-cast ductile iron with
chemical compositions of 3.45C-2.72Si-0.80Ni and 0.6Cu (wt.% ) and 3.53C-2.66
Si-0.12Ni and 0.01Cu (wt.%). The austenitization temperature was 900 ° C for 2
hours. The temperatures of austempering was of 200 ° C and 230 ° C for the
system Cu-Ni and 215 ° C and 245 ° C for the system without alloying, the times of
austempering was of 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, and 10 hours for both alloy systems. The
chemical and microstructural characterization was using the techniques of optical
emission spectrometry, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and X-
ray diffraction. The results indicate that the microstructure produced by the
austempering process depends strongly on the temperature and time of
transformation. Higher transformation times showed a higher volumetric fraction of
bainite ferrite formed reaching; the time to obtain the highest fraction of high
carbon austenite decreases with temperature. Cu and Ni do not have a clear
influence on the formation of ausferrite. The bainitic ferrite produced is between 7-
70 nanometers thick.

Key words: Ductile cast iron, Austempering, Nanostructure, Ausferrite.

Author for Correspondence: Mateo Montoya Mejía.