White Cast Iron

A type of cast iron with lower levels of carbon and improved tensile strength.  These castings possess high compressive strength and excellent wear resistance. They tend to be used in wear resistant applications such as cylinder, or fluid flow applications. White cast iron displays white fractured surfaces due to the presence of an iron carbide precipitate called cementite.

White iron is too brittle for use in many structural components, but with good hardness and abrasion resistance and relatively low cost, it finds use in such applications as:

• Wear surfaces (impeller and volute) of slurry pumps
• Shell liners and lifter bars in grinding mills
• Balls and rings in coal pulverisers
• Teeth of a backhoe’s digging buckets