Development of nano-structured Austempered Ductile Cast Iron (ADI)

Austempered Ductile Cast Iron (ADI) has emerged as an important engineering material in recent years. It has a combination of high strength, good ductilty, good fatigue strength and fracture toughness. Because of these excellent properties, it is now used extensively used in many structural applications such as automotive components, earth moving machinaries etc. 

An investigation was carried out to develop ADI with a nano scale microstructure.This was achieved by high temperature deformation and subsequent austempering of ductile cast iron. The effect of processing parameters such as deformation temperature, strain rate,  austempering temperature and austempering time on microstructural features such as volume fraction of phases, size and distribution of phases were examined.