MODELING MICROSTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT IN GRAY CAST IRONS

Recent years have seen increasing use of solidification process modeling as a tool to aid in the analysis and elimination of manufacturing defects in castings. Grain size and other microstructural features such as second-phase morphology and distribution are the primary factors in determining the mechanical properties in cast metals. In this work, a representation of nucleation and growth kinetics for gray cast irons, based on a statistical description of the microstructure, has been coupled with a commercial finite-element method code for transient heat-flow calculation to determine microstructure. Features predicted include eutectic cell size, fractions of gray and white iron, graphite morphology, percent pearlite, percent ferrite, and pearlite spacing. The predicted microstructure can then be used to determine the strength and fatigue properties using published correlations. The theoretical development and results of the finite-element-based model will be discussed and compared with experimental results,