This diploma thesis is focused on the surface hardening of cast irons with spheroidal graphite. The work describes a theoretical analysis of the structure and properties of cast irons and individual methods suitable for surface hardening. The practical part describes the production of cast iron castings with spheroidal graphite, on which the surface hardening is performed, tensile test, hardening of produced castings by induction and laser surface hardening, preparation of samples for measuring microhardness and metallographic analysis of metal structures.

This work is focused on segregation processes in the matrix of spheroidal graphite cast iron with different silicon and nickel content during heat treatment. The aim of this work is to trace the redistribution of the elements of interest during homogenization annealing with different dwell time by comparison of the effective distribution coefficients. Comparison of some specific properties and description of structure development of spheroidal graphite cast iron matrix from initial state to the state after ferritization and homogenization annealing is included in this work.

This doctoral thesis deals with the comparison of different methods of alloying elements’ concentration measurement based on energy dispersive spectroscopy and also with the suitability of particular methods of quantitative assessment of heterogeneity of the spheroidal graphite cast iron matrix. The segregation curves construction, distribution coefficient and heterogeneity index formulation is also discussed. The notion “normalized distribution coefficient” is introduced newly. The goal of the thesis, which is to be achieved by means of evaluation of large experimental data sets, is the evaluation of applicability of homogenization annealing of spheroidal graphite cast iron with the aim to eliminate segregation of silicon, and mainly nickel, as pearlite- and carbide-forming agent at the border of an eutectic cell. The result is an optimized homogenization annealing schedule maximizing the suppression of silicon and nickel segregation while taking into account the minimization of financial expenses and risk of grain coarsening.