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Ductile Iron Front-End Ultrasonic Nodularity Determination Using Standard Coupons

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A Correction to this article was published on 22 April 2019

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Abstract

Ductile iron nodularity is of critical importance to its quality, but nodularity determination by metallographic analysis can be problematic. The widespread practice of estimating nodularity via comparator chart is highly subjective and prone to unacceptably high variation. An improvement over visual metallographic estimates is digital image analysis (IA) by which subjectivity can be greatly reduced, but the more reliable results obtained from IA are time-consuming and difficult to implement in a production environment. For this paper, the use of ultrasonic velocity testing via a standard coupon was evaluated as a possibly more reliable technique for determining front-end (real time) nodularity. Major results are presented herein along with details necessary for implementation of front-end ultrasonic nodularity determination using standard coupons as standard practice.

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Change history

  • 22 April 2019

    In the original article, the authors neglected to explicitly state prior to presentation of results for the as-cast water-quenched (ACWQ) plus tempered coupons from the November, 2012 (Y2012) fade campaign that all reported velocities were measured prior to tempering, as the tempering was necessary only to facilitate the sectioning of those coupons by conventional band saw for their metallographic analysis. The tempering of such ACWQ coupons at 482 °C for 48 h raises their velocities by ~ 100 m/s.

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Acknowledgements

The authors give special thanks to the following individuals for their invaluable assistance in getting front-end ultrasonic nodularity determination using standard coupons (FEUNDUSC) implemented as standard procedure for the real-time quantification of ductile iron nodularity at AAM Casting-New Castle: (1) To Marc Henry and Joe Marie of Team NDT, LLC, for their mentoring on the basic physics and fundamentals of ultrasonic testing. (2) To Clarke Steigerwald, Adam Babarik, Neethu Varghese, Nikhil Naik and Ricardo Jimenez of Midwest Information Systems, Inc., for their clear presentation of the capabilities of the PAX-it!® software for digital image analysis of cast irons and further tutoring on navigation of the software whenever it was needed. (3) To David Coulston of LECO Corporation for sharing his practical experience in using the PAX-it!® software for the digital image analysis of cast irons. (4) To Skip Weaver of Heraeus Electro-Nite Company for loaning thermal analysis equipment and donating ‘plain’ thermal analysis cups for the November 2009 fade campaign. (5) To Tom Kasee of Sawbrook Steel Castings for providing us with the plain hypoeutectoid carbon steel plates devoid of graphite nodules. Those plates of both ‘low’-carbon (more ferrite) and ‘high’-carbon (more pearlite) contents were used in evaluating the effect of ferrite/pearlite contents on ultrasonic velocity in the absence of graphite nodules. (6) To John Finley and Jim Miller of ASQ Section No. 0904 for their generous review and commentary on much of the statistical analysis presented in this paper. (7) To Nicholas Thornberry and Shana Beckley for their voluminous processing of highly detailed metallography reports that were necessary for drawing meaningful and statistically significant conclusions regarding correlations between metallography metrics and ultrasonic velocity. (8) To all AAM Casting-New Castle Melt Department personnel who provided support and assistance in the casting of all coupons used in the development work. (9) To Gary Bray, Herb McGhee, Craig Ead, Barry Mosier and others for their support and assistance with the FEUNDUSC development work in addition to their primary laboratory responsibilities for production support. (10) To Joe Sullivan and Jerry Krupp for doing comparative MAGMASOFT® solidification simulations of conventional metallographic micro-lugs and FEUNDUSC coupons. (11) To Tim Davis for his support in enabling compatible implementation of the FEUNDUSC testing procedure with AAM Casting-New Castle’s internal computer systems and his further assistance in facilitating data analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. American Axle and Manufacturing Casting Division, New Castle, IN, USA

    James Cree, Mike Robles Jr., Adam Hoover, Nicholas Thornberry & Shana Beckley

Authors
  1. James Cree
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  2. Mike Robles Jr.
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  3. Adam Hoover
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  4. Nicholas Thornberry
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  5. Shana Beckley
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Correspondence to James Cree.

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Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

40962_2019_322_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Appendix 1. Effects of Varying Cu and Mn on ‘Fresh’ and ‘Aged’ Ultrasonic Velocities, presented at AFS Committee 5-R Meeting on 09/18/13 (PDF 98 kb)

Appendix 2. AAM-New Castle’s DIS Autumn 2015 Abridged Meeting Info (PDF 455 kb)

Appendix 3. Ductile Iron Aging Effects Following Supercritical (Re-Austenitization) Heat Treatments (PDF 179 kb)

Appendix 4. Effects of Thermal History and Image Analysis Filters on Ductile Iron Metallography (PDF 729 kb)

Appendix 5. Effects of Casting Cooling Rates and Supercritical HT’s on Ductile Iron Ultrasonic Velocity (PDF 141 kb)

40962_2019_322_MOESM6_ESM.pdf

Appendix 6. Effects of Carbon Content on the Ultrasonic Velocity and Microstructure of Hypoeutectoid Carbon Steels (PDF 901 kb)

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Cree, J., Robles, M., Hoover, A. et al. Ductile Iron Front-End Ultrasonic Nodularity Determination Using Standard Coupons. Inter Metalcast 14, 861–893 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40962-019-00322-3

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