Rick Gundlach began his lengthy professional career at the Climax Molybdenum Company where he conducted pioneering research on cast molybdenum steels and cast irons. He would later co-found Climax Research Services (CRS), an important engineering and testing company serving the automotive community, and now a division of Element Materials Technology. Throughout his testing, failure analysis, and consulting career, Rick completed research and published numerous papers on the structure-property relationships in gray, ductile, and white cast irons for structural and mining applications, much of it funded by AFS. 

While this article will primarily focus on Rick’s contributions to the research body of AFS, it should be noted that he completed 15 research programs for the Ductile Iron Society (DIS), averaging the completion of a major program every two years. He also completed work on the cast aluminum 300 series alloys as well as worked with one of the authors, John Tartaglia, to organize an aluminum thermal fatigue consortium of 25 automotive industrial companies.

The Beginnings—Setting the Stage for a Career in Research

Rick began his metallurgy studies at Michigan Technological University. It was his love for classical music and the desire for a more rounded education that led him to transfer to the University of Michigan where he earned his BSE in 1968 and an MSE in 1972, both in Metallurgical Engineering. 

Rick’s research and technical career began when he published his master thesis with his advisor, Professor Robert Pehlke, on the “Rate of Molybdenum Solution in Carbon-saturated Liquid Iron.” After completing his studies, he accepted a full-time position with the Climax Molybdenum Co (AMAX lab) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he would become the supervisor of the cast metals group.

When the Climax research facility in Ann Arbor was closed in 1987, Rick became the first president of Climax Research Services, which he started with two other Climax Moly colleagues. They operated a full-services metallurgical engineering and testing company and built a new facility in Wixom, Michigan, in 2000. In 2010, CRS was purchased by Stork, and that company was later rebranded as Element Materials Technology.

Significant Research Contributions

In the late 1990s, the ductile iron (DI) community was starting to lose market share in the automotive world. At that time, it was believed that bending stress versus life data was the key information that design engineers needed. Rick challenged this paradigm and educated DI producers about an SAE standard, SAE J1099, which contained the strain-life fatigue database that design engineers used in their materials selection process. 

To quote Rick, “If your material is not in this database, it is invisible to designers.” As a result, the Ductile Iron Society (DIS) funded a small program to evaluate SAE grade D5506. Gundlach, Paige Ritter, and John Tartaglia demonstrated that fatigue life remained relatively constant at a given applied cyclic strain across the hardness range for D5506, so one set of fatigue coefficients and exponents would accurately represent the entire hardness range of D5506 in design models. 

As an outgrowth of that initial strain-life fatigue study, a much larger fatigue database program was funded by AFS and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The AFS database would eventually expand to include 30 cast irons, eight cast aluminum alloys and 11 cast steels. AFS now markets the database as Casting Alloy Data Search (CADS, www.afscads.com) and it allows designers to interact with it online to make property predictions.

Most of Rick’s contributions to AFS were in the area of improving the properties of ductile iron. He, along with Tartaglia and Tony Goodrich, proposed a study that was jointly-funded by AFS and DIS to produce a yield strength greater than 55 ksi and an elongation greater than 12% consistently for SAE J434 Grade D5506 (03) and ASTM A536 Grade 80-55-06. Phase 1 of the program evaluated commercial heats of ductile iron. Foundries that produced iron with an ideal ferrite content of 40%–60% could achieve a target combination of ≥55 ksi yield strength and ≥10% elongation. Phase 2 of the program consisted of a DOE  project with castings poured at a single experimental foundry. Figure 1 shows that it is possible to achieve substantially higher tensile elongations in grade 80-55-06 in multiple heats with thin to moderate section sizes with high Si, low Mn, high Cu and a 40%–60% ferrite content.

Building on the DI improvement project results, Rick designed some novel heat treatments that utilized grain refinement and a novel microstructure (see Figure 2) by intercritical (IC) austenitizing of DI. The IC heat-treated grades had higher (up to 5%) tensile elongation at equivalent strength as compared to standard quenched and tempered grade ASTM A536 grade 120-90-02 with 2% elongation.

In 2019, Rick received one of his three AFS Howard Taylor Awards for “On the Influence of Mn and S on the Microstructure of Cast Iron.” This paper explained how Mn and S should be balanced according to MnS solubility (%Mn x %S = 0.03 to 0.05) to achieve optimum strength and resistance to chill in cast iron. A certain level of free sulfur is necessary to promote undercooling and a higher cell count to achieve a higher tensile strength and a minimum propensity to chill. However, when sulfur is increased beyond optimum levels, a change in fracture mode occurs, resulting in embrittlement and reduced tensile strength. 

Rick did not just confine his technological efforts to the structure and properties of gray and ductile cast iron. Along with Sanjib Majumdar, he patented two high chromium white irons. The unique microstructure of the patented alloy is shown in Figure 3. The patents disclosed an iron-based casting alloy and a process for making the alloy by combining an iron-carbon-chromium system with primary carbides of vanadium, niobium, titanium, or combinations thereof without any eutectic carbides of vanadium, niobium and titanium. CRS and subsequently Element licensed three companies to utilize the patented technology to manufacture longer lasting parts with increased wear resistance: a white iron foundry that made grinding mill parts, a steam and coal generation equipment producer, and a utility company. The licenses survived the lives of the patents––approximately 16 years.

In his final paper posthumously published in collaboration with Tartaglia, the results from an AFS-funded study that defined the various influences that silicon has on the microstructure and heat treatment response of high-Cr white cast irons were summarized. Gunndlach found that raising Cr from 15%–25% caused the optimum hardening temperature to rise. The peak hardness was significantly higher in the leaner Cr alloys with the peak hardness decreasing slightly with increasing Si content. This work will allow white iron producers to save money by purchasing lower cost charge materials for 15% Cr iron. It has also inspired the members of the AFS Cast Iron Division’s Special Iron Committee to continue this fundamental research.

Publications

Rick published while he worked at both Climax Molybdenum and Element. The publication topics included gray and ductile irons, austempered ductile irons, thermal fatigue of cast aluminum, abrasion-resistant high chromium white cast irons, metallography, and mechanical testing. Most of the 81 articles he authored (or co-authored) were published in scholarly-reviewed journals including AFS Transactions, IJMC (International Journal of Metal Casting), and ASM/TMS Metallurgical Transactions, but he also published in a variety of trade journals including Modern Casting, ASM’s Metal Progress, Industrial Heating, Keith D. Millis Symposium (AFS and DIS), and SAE World Congress. Rick was a sought-after speaker to share information from these many publications.

Perhaps his most lasting contributions were in handbooks published by professional societies. Rick co-authored the “Abrasion-resistant Cast Iron Handbook” and the chapter on the Composition of Ductile Irons in the “Ductile Iron Handbook” published by AFS. For ASM International, he co-authored the chapters “Alloy Cast Irons” in Volume 1 “Irons & Steels,” “Heat Treatment of High-Alloy Irons” in Volume 4 “Heat Treatment,” as well as “High Alloy Graphitic Cast Irons” and “High Alloy White Cast Irons” in Volume 15 “Castings.” In continuation of a long publishing collaboration with Tartaglia, Rick co-authored “Fractography of Cast Irons” in Volume 12 “Fractography.”

Awards & Recognition

Rick’s research and accomplishments were recognized and honored by several technical organizations. His list of AFS achievements is lengthy and includes the Joseph S. Seaman Gold Medal, an Award of Scientific Merit, the AFS Cast Iron Division Best Paper Award (five times), the Howard Taylor Award (three times), the Applied Research Award, and the Hoyt Memorial Lecture. In addition, he was a Fellow of ASM International and a recipient of the DIS annual award. 

In honor of Rick’s contributions to AFS, the Cast Iron Division Executive Committee unanimously voted in 2024 to rename their Individual Service Citation to the “Richard B. Gundlach Outstanding Individual Service Award”, and so far, two recipients have received it. (Figure 4)

Summary

Throughout his life, Rick Gundlach exuded a passion and love for metallurgy, metal casting, and educating co-op students and industrial practitioners. His legacy to AFS and the metal casting world was the fundamental and practical research that he conducted on the structure-properties relationship of cast metals.