Examining the role of rare earth elements on grey iron’s microstructural and mechanical properties

ABSTRACT

Grey cast iron, prized for its durability and thermal performance in applications like engine cylinder liners, sees widespread use in defence, engineering, and transportation. Investigating the impact of rare earth elements on its properties, a mix of lanthanum and cerium was introduced. These elements act as nucleating and graphitising agents, refining graphite microstructure and adjusting pearlite layer spacing. Results showed a notable improvement in Brinell hardness (453 HB, a 79% increase with 0.6 wt.% rare earth), compressive strength (2209 MPa), and tensile strength (501 MPa at 0.4 wt.% rare earth). However, excessive rare earth inclusion can have detrimental effects. The study underscores the potential to enhance greyggrey cast iron’s microstructure and mechanical properties through judicious rare earth additions.

KEYWORDS:

• Gray cast iron
• rare earth elements
• La
• Ce
• microstructure
• mechanical properties

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the authors are grateful to the financial support by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U21A2042) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52374384).

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. U21A2042]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 52374384].