Influence of Graphite Nodules Geometrical Features on Fatigue Life of High-Strength Nodular Cast Iron

This paper is concerned with the evaluation of different fatigue strength theories to predict the fatigue life of high-strength nodular cast iron. There have been some studies on the effects of the shape and size of graphite nodules, and of microstructure, on the fatigue strength of nodular cast iron. However, there is not a consensus on how to correlate the fatigue limit with material intrinsic properties or with external features such as considering graphite nodules as defects. Some researchers found good correlations between fatigue strength, σ_w0, and the geometrical aspects of the graphite nodules, considering it as internal material defects. It will be shown in this study that geometrical features such as shape, size, and relative position seem to be adequate to be included in those predictions. In this article, a high-strength cast iron, with rupture strength of about 1300 MPa and Young’s modulus of about 160 GPa, has been used. Correlations both with intrinsic properties as well as with other geometrical effects have been made. A comparison of different theories has also been carried out. This article was presented at Materials Science & Technology 2007, Automotive and Ground Vehicles symposium held September 16–20, 2007, in Detroit, MI.     

Components of a Variance Model for the Analysis of Repeated Measurements in Fixed-Point Comparisons

Experimental design is a statistical tool concerned with the planning of experiments to obtain the maximum amount of information from the available resources. This tool may be applied to metrology, especially for the analysis of a large number of repeated measurements (replicates) of short-term repeatability and the medium-term and long-term reproducibilities, enabling the inclusion of these “time-dependent sources of variability” in the uncertainty budget. The realization of the International Temperature Scale of 1990 (ITS-90) scale requires that laboratories usually have more than one cell for each fixed point, for comparison on a regular basis. The calculation of the uncertainty of such comparisons is considered here, taking into account these time-dependent sources of variability. These components of the uncertainty evaluated by a Type A method are obtained by the statistical analysis of the experimental results using the components of a variance model for designs consisting of nested or hierarchical sequences of measurements, as foreseen by the mainstream GUM. An application example of a balanced nested structure in the comparison of two fixed-point cells is presented.