An Empirical Model for Carbon Diffusion in Grey Iron/Stainless Steel Bimetallic Composites Incorporating Eutectic Carbides

The mechanism of carbon diffusion in the as-cast and heat-treated grey iron and 304 stainless steel bimetallic composites was investigated in this study. A simplistic empirical model for the interface carbon diffusion was proposed and has been validated against the experimental data. A liquid-solid compound casting technique was used to fabricate the bimetallic composites. For the graphitizing annealing heat treatment, the bimetallic composite specimens were heated to 940 °C and held for 120 min and 240 min in an electric heating furnace. The proposed empirical model is based on the presence of eutectic carbides chill zone near the interface that formed during solidification of the liquid grey iron above the solid stainless steel substrate. It was found that the calculated carbon concentration profiles based on the proposed diffusion model were in good agreement with the experimental results.