from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
The results of the experiments on the high-silicon cast iron crystallization have been presented in the paper. The researches have been focused on the transformations in solid state during the crystallization process. The temperature changes have been recorded during the experiments. The temperature first derivative as a time function has been calculated what made possible to estimate some characteristic points (fields) of the crystallization process. Thanks to these results the phase transformations description has been elaborated. Two foundry alloys with Si content below and above 15% have been used for the melts. Additionally, the attempt of the influence of the heat transfer rate from the mold on the alloy morphology estimation has been made. The inspiration for such approach was to describe the factors influencing the crystallization process e.g. chemical analysis, casting parameters, mold cooling conditions etc. and their influence on the alloy overall quality. The target were especially intermetallic phases i.e. Fe5Si3 characteristic for alloys with higher Si concentration. There is a lack of scientific literature in this topic and a lot of them is quite obsolete and what is more some data are mutually contradictory. The data according to the alloy matrix microstructure is ambiguous when the upper limit of 15 % Si is exceeded. Some sources claim 100 % of silicon ferrite while the other claim some percentage of iron silicide. The crystallization process parameters influence on these phases growth has not been described in the literature yet.
Keywords: silicon cast iron, crystallization, intermetallic phases, thermal derivative analysis, quality control© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.