Experimental model of the pearlite interlamellar spacing in lamellar graphite iron

The pearlite lamellar spacing (λ pearlite ) is one of the microstructure parameters that define the strength of the lamellar graphite iron (LGI).The transformation kinetics of λ pearlite has been the subject of several modeling studies for steels, which demonstrated that the λ pearlite can be calculated as a function of undercooling.However, it is hard to find in the literature the models for the prediction of λ pearlite in LGI.In the present work, λ pearlite in fully pearlitic LGI was investigated for a wide range of carbon contents and cooling rates.The undercooling and the cooling rates were estimated from the experimental cooling curves and were utilized for the prediction of λ pearlite .The experimental data analysis provides an empirical expression that correlates λ pearlite and cooling rates from the eutectoid transformation region.The developed empirical model was incorporated into a casting simulation software to enable the prediction of λ pearlite in LGI and the simulation results were found to be in good agreement with the experimental data.