FLEXICAST 48 months WP5 report

This deliverable is a prosecution of the activities related to the Deliverable "Specific Pieces Design" D 5.5. As explained in the previous report, the design of a specific piece need to consider many components or factors. The work that the component should do, the working condition (ex. dirt environment, corrosion, fluid contact, etc.) the material property and the geometry. The aim of the previous Deliverable is to give a methodology useful to design fluid power components made by cast iron. In the present deliverable a prosecution of the activities performed is presented, mainly about the metallurgical effects visible on the cast iron component made using the Flexicast approach. Two different casted components (directional control valve), one made using the traditional production system (without exothermic feeders) and one using the optimized method (with exothermic feeders) were compared and the hardness maps were obtained for both of them.