A rapid approach to estimate the mechanical properties of grey cast iron castings

Grey cast iron is a brittle or quasi-brittle material very sensitive to the microstructure morphology deriving from its solidification kinetics. This is the reason why different zones of a casting, even with the same thickness, may be characterized by different mechanical properties according to the solidification time. The mechanical characterization of the alloy made by following the Standards that refer to values obtained from separately casted samples is insufficient for a designer who needs to know the specific properties of the material in each zone of interest of the casting. In this work a method is described to predict the mechanical properties of castings made of GH 190 cast iron that correlates the solidification times with the ultimate tensile strength through a master curve, supposed to depend only on alloy chemical composition. This predictive approach was successfully validated with experimental mechanical characterization of a real industrial casting.