The paper is undertaken with the objective of describing a new method for treating ductile cast iron in a ladle process, where the main objective is to minimize formation of eutectic carbides and shrinkage porosity during solidification. The suppression of carbide formation is associated with the nucleating properties of the nodularizer and inoculant alloys. By nucleating properties it is understood the number and potency of nuclei formed by an alloy addition. The nodularizer and inoculant additions also influence ductile iron solidification shrinkage. Some alloys may give good protection against shrinkage while others tend to promote more shrinkage.The use of vanous rare earth elements is found to have a pronounced impact on these conditions. It has been discovered that the use of pure lanthanum as the primary rare earth source in the magnesium ferrosilicon nodularizer surprisingly further improves the performance of the ductile iron ladle treatment method compared to similar methods using cerium or mishmetal bearing nodularizers. The nucleating properties are substantially improved and the risk for carbides (chill) and shrinkage formation in the sandwich or tundish ladle treated ductile iron is then minimized.The paper describes this new ladle treatment concept in detail, and gives examples from successful testing of the new nodularizing technology and how it simultaneously affects and minimizes critical ductile iron chill and shrinkage tendencies.
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