INVESTIGATION OF THE MECHANICAL DAMPING OF DUCTILE IRON

Ductile iron has been suggested as a candidate material for a number of practical applications, including turbine castings, automotive components, and transportation and storage casks for hazardous and radioactive materials. The applications require the enhanced ductility resulting from the presence of spherical graphite nodules in the ductile ferrite iron matrix. Proper design of such components requires a knowledge of the mechanical properties, including how energy is absorbed and dissipated (mechanical damping) by the test material. This article is a study of the mechanical damping of a series of well-characterized ductile iron materials (four separate materials) as a function of strain amplitude, temperature over the range of -100 degrees C to + 100 degrees C, and magnetic field. The major sources of damping were found to be dislocation motion in the graphite phase and magnetomechanical damping in the ferrite phase. The magnitude of the magnetomechanical damping was much larger than that due to dislocation motion. An additional goal of the investigation was to determine if any correlation existed between the measured mechanical damping and the fracture toughness of the ductile iron materials; no correlation was found.