Validation of a New Quality Assessment Procedure for Ductile Irons Production Based on Strain Hardening Analysis

A mathematical procedure based on the analysis of tensile flow curves has been proposed to assess the microstructure quality of several ductile irons (DIs). The procedure consists of a first diagram for the assessment of the ideal microstructure of DIs, that is, the matrix where mobile dislocations move, and a second diagram for the assessment of the casting integrity because of potential metallurgical discontinuities and defects in DIs. Both diagrams are based on the dislocation-density-related constitutive Voce equation that is used for modeling the tensile plastic behavior of DIs. The procedure stands on the fundamental assumption that the strain hardening behavior of DIs is not affected by the nature and the density of the potential metallurgical discontinuities and defects, which are expected to affect only the elongations to fracture. However, this fundamental assumption is not obvious, and so its validity was evaluated through tensile testing Isothermed Ductile Irons (IDIs) 800, showing a wide scatter of elongations to rupture. The analysis of the strain hardening behaviors supported by strain energy density calculations of IDIs tensile tests proved that the fundamental assumption was valid and the quality assessment procedure could be applied to IDIs. A modified Voce equation was also introduced to improve the fitting of the experimental tensile flow curves and the strain energy density calculations.