한국주조공학회

Strip casting process is a new technology that makes a near net shape thin strip directly from molten metal. With this process, a large amount of energy and casting cost could be decreased from the abbreviation of reheating and/or hot rolling process. Ductile cast iron which has spheroidal graphite in the matrix is the most commercial and industrial material, because of its supreme strength, toughness, and wear resistance etc. But it cannot be produced to the thin strip owing to difficulty in rolling of ductile cast iron. In this study, ductile cast iron strips are produced by the twin roll strip caster, with different chemical compositions of C, Si, and Mn contents. And then heat-treated, microstructures and mechanical properties are examined. The microstructures of as-cast strip are that of white cast iron which consists of the mixture of cementite and pearlite, but the equiaxed crystal zone of the pearlite or segregation zone of cementite exists in the center region of the strip thickness, which cannot be observed in the rapidly solidified metallic mold cast specimens. This structure is supposed to be formed from the thermal distribution of strip and the rolling force. Comparing with the structures of each strips after heat treatment, increasing Si content makes smaller spheroidal graphite and more compact in the matrix, furthermore the less of Mn content makes the ferrite matrix be obtained clearer and easier. As a result of the tensile test of graphitization heat-treated strips, the yield strengths are about 250 MPa, the tensile strengths are about 430~500 MPa, and the elongations are about 10~13%. In the case of the strip which has the smaller and more compact spheroidal graphite in the ferrite matrix, the higher tensile strength and better drawability could be obtained.