Influence of Casting Section Thickness on Fatigue Strength of Austempered Ductile Iron

The influence of casting section thickness on fatigue strength of austempered ductile iron was investigated in this study. ASTM A536 65-45-12 grade of ductile iron was produced, machined into round samples of 10, 15, 20 and 25 mm diameter, austenitized at a temperature of 820 °C, quenched into an austempering temperature (\(T_{\text{A}}\)) of 300 and 375 °C and allowed to be isothermally transformed at these temperatures for a fixed period of 2 h. From the samples, fatigue test specimens were machined to conform to ASTM E-466. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) methods were used to characterize microstructural morphology and phase distribution of heat-treated samples. The fatigue strength decreases as the section thickness increases. The SEM image and XRD patterns show a matrix of acicular ferrite and carbon-stabilized austenite with ferrite coarsening and volume fraction of austenite reducing as the section thickness increases. The study concluded that the higher the value of carbon-stabilized austenite the higher the fatigue strength while it decreases as the ausferrite structure becomes coarse.