Dynamic driving experience

A material that has been known for decades has been reworked to meet new applications in the automotive industry.

This is what Georg Fischer Automotive has done with the well-known material cast iron. The result is known as SiboDur.

The new material’s name reflects both its “ingredients” and its properties. The name SiboDur is derived from the silicon, boron it incorporates and from the material’s extreme durability achieved through a special manufacturing formula.

The material, used to date in the German plants of GF Automotive in Singen and Mettmann, reconciles what is actually irreconcilable: hardness and ductility. It is destined for use in passenger vehicles where its dynamic properties will be particularly important in the development of chassis parts.

The hardness of cast iron can be increased, as engineers have long known, by creating graphite precipitates in the form of spheroidal particles rather than flakes. Unfortunately, this also makes the material brittle. This problem can be dealt with by adding silicon, which makes the cast iron more ductile, but at the cost of castability.