Contact Fatigue Strength of Austempered Ductile Iron (ADI) in Gear Applications

Abstract

Austempered Ductile Iron (ADI) is widely implemented to achieve lightweight and optimized components in power transmissions (e.g., internal gear in planetary stages), by substituting steel castings or a combination of Ductile Iron and steel-assembled structures. In this paper, the contact fatigue of two ADI grades (ADI J/S900-8; ADI J/S1200-3) is investigated by disk-on-disk tests. The disk-on-disk contact is an analogy model of the tooth contact and represents the tribological conditions at a specific point on the path of contact. The experimental results cover the endurance limit as well as the short time fatigue behavior for both ADI variants. In addition, the pitting characteristics and microstructural changes are analyzed in order to get a further understanding of the fatigue behavior of ADI.