Mats Hillert’s Invaluable Contributions to Cast Irons

Abstract

The microstructures and properties of foundry alloys designated by the generic term “cast irons” are highly diverse, even if we limit ourselves to so-called silicon cast irons, which are essentially quasi-eutectic Fe-C-Si alloys. This diversity is compounded by the fact that these microstructures appear partly during solidification and partly during solid-state transformations. Throughout the scientific career of Mats Hillert, his attention has been drawn to the wide range of phenomena involved in the formation of cast iron microstructures during solidification, as the present review of his contributions in this field shows. In addition, much of his work on the solid-state transformations of steels has found—or should find—an echo in the description of the matrix microstructure of graphitic cast irons, which is the subject of the final part of this article.