Svetlana Proidak’s research while affiliated with Applied Materials and other places

Currently, cast iron remains one of the major modern casting materials in metallurgy and machine-building industry and is sure to take the lead in the future. Chilled cast iron has high hardness and wear resistance due to a large number of carbide phases in its structure. However, low ductility and impact hardness essentially limit its applicability in terms of processing. Hot plastic working, under which the eutectic net crushing is observed, appears to be one of the most effective means of the eutectic alloy products shape and microstructure transformation. Chilled cast iron properties fundamentally improve after hot plastic working: ductility, strength and impact hardness increase by 2-3 times on retention of the high hardness factor. Chilled cast iron ductility increase can be attained when using phase transformations in eutectic cementite under lean alloying with carbide forming elements. The purpose of the paper is to study alloying effect on the chilled cast iron ductility as well as eutectic cementite behavior under hot rolling. In the paper hardening and softening of the structural components in chilled cast iron under hot working have been studied. The deformation texture forming in eutectic cementite under hot rolling has been revealed, which is connected with the dynamic softening and depends on the degree and the nature of its alloying. The mechanism and regularities of the phase transformation effect in cementite on its behavior under plastic deformation and on the alloys ductility in general have been studied. In cementite chromium alloying initiates processes, that can be characterized as the pre-precipitation stage of the new phases, and this way it contributes to the cast iron ductility reduction and embrittles cementite. Carbide transformation, that occurs in eutectic cementite under alloying with vanadium, stimulates softening of the alloy and increases its ductility level. Moreover, the multiple glide planes {130},{011},{112} in cementite have been determined. It has been found out, that in supersaturated cementite vanadium carbides precipitation stimulates the extra glide plane {111} occurrence under hot rolling. The essence of the carbide transformation phenomenon is that under hot working there occurs the lubricating effect at the transition of the metastable iron carbide condition, which is strengthened with vanadium supersaturation and mechanical hardening, to a more stable condition due to precipitation of the proeutectoid constituents on the one hand, and because of the dynamic softening processes on the other hand. At that, the autocatalyticity effect is observed: there is precipitation of carbides with hardening and softening, similar to the processes that arise as a result of the superplastic effect induced by phase transformations.

The processing by pulses of electric current (PEC) of a fragment of the rim of a railway wheel was carried out on the DS10D equipment. When the density of the electric current is from 3 to 17 A/mm ² , the processing cycle consisted of the action of a pulse with a duration of 2.5-3 s and a pause between pulses of 4 s. After 150 cycles of PEC, the hardness of cold-formed metal was reduced from 10 to 20%. Studies of the parameters of the metal structure of the wheels have determined that the processing of PEC leads to a decrease in the number of defects in the internal structure, which are accumulated as a result of cold deformation of the rim along the rolling surface of the railway wheel. It has been established that, according to the nature of the influence on the hardness distribution of carbon steel, the PEC treatment corresponds to changes during tempering in the average temperature range and allows to significantly increase the operating parameters of the wheels of railway equipment.

Causes of reasons and explanation of mechanism forming damages of railway wheels tread were investigated. At slipping on contact surfaces wheelrail a between by simultaneous development of processes of work-hardening and softening metal determines the terms of origin damages of railway wheels tread were fixed.