J. Shanghai Jiaotong Univ. (Sci.

), 2011, 16(2): 137-140

DOI: 10.1007/s12204-011-1108-5

Integrated Fluid-Thermal-Structural Numerical Analysis for

the Quenching of Metallic Components

GAO Wei-min∗ (), FABIJANIC Daniel, HILDITCH Tim, KONG Ling-xue ()
(Centre for Material and Fibre Innovation, Deakin University, Geelong VIC3217, Australia)

© Shanghai Jiaotong University and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011

Abstract: The quenching of a metal component with a channel section in a water tank is numerically simulated.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to model the multiphase flow and the heat transfer in film boiling,
nucleate boiling and convective cooling processes to calculate the difference in heat transfer rate around the
component and then combining with the thermal simulation and structure analysis of the component to study the
effect of heat transfer rate on the distortion of the U-channel component. A model is also established to calculate
the residual stress produced by quenching. The coupling fluid-thermal-structural simulation provides an insight
into the deformation of the component and can be used to perform parameter analysis to reduce the distortion of
the component.
Key words: fluid-thermal-structure, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), residual stress, phase transformation,
quenching, spring back
CLC number: TB 126 Document code: A

0 Introduction and mechanical behaviour[2-7] . Due to the studies on

Quenching is a common manufacturing process to
obtain unique service performance properties of metal-
lic parts by controlling the amount and the morphol-
ogy of micro-structural constituents. As it is a com-
plex multi physics problem, it is essential to couple
fluid, thermal, phase transformation, microstructural
and mechanical behaviour to describe the unusual com-
plex phenomenon. The phase transformation during
quenching and the final phase constituents result in dif-
ferent microstructures, which depend on cooling rate
and chemical composition of the steel. The cooling
rate at part surface highly depends on the flow and
the thermo-physical properties of quenchant and the
thermo-chemical reactions occurring at the interface.
Non-uniform heat transfer and phase transformation
associated with large temperature gradients can lead
to the difference in variation of volume (expansion or
contraction) within component and, as a result, pro-
duce high residual stresses in quenched steels. The in-
ternal stresses can produce distortion and even crack-
ing. Each of the phenomena included in the quenching
process and the coupling of some individual physical
problems has been addressed by numerical methods[1-2] .
There are a number of simulation works focusing on
phase transformation, microstructure, residual stress
Received date: 2011-01-21
∗E-mail: weimin.gao@deakin.edu.au
the theory and the numerical simulation of the individ-
ual events that occur during quenching and the compu-
tational method for fast and accurate prediction of the
multi-physical phenomenon in the last three decades,
the simulation of quenching process became realistic
and several commercial software packages had been de-
veloped to be capable of simulating quenching process,
such as DANTE, DEFORM-HT, FORGE, HEARTS,
SYSWELD and Quench Simulator. However, most
studies consider the quenching process as a thermal-
microstructural-mechanical problem[1-2] and these soft-
ware are incapable of coupling with dynamic character-
istics of fluid in quenching tank, which determines the
local cooling rate at part surfaces.
Coupling quenching simulations with computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) is a major interest[8-9] . However,
fluid-thermal simulation in most of the research is fo-
cused on single phase liquid or gas quenching. The
fluid flow during immersion quenching, which is the
most common process used today, is much complex;
especially, phase changes of the quenching media occur
during quenching. Heat transfer during quenching is
controlled by different mechanisms, depending on the
superheat temperature of hot parts. The quenching
generally consists of three distinct stages of cooling: va-
por phase, nucleate boiling, and convection[10]. Upon
immersion into the liquid quenchant, the part is imme-
diately surrounded by vapor blanket due to evaporation
138
of the quenchant. The heat transfer is mainly by radi-
ation and the cooling rate in this stage is slow. As
continuous transfer of heat, the vapor film grows and
becomes unstable and collapses. The heat transfer is
then by the mechanism of called partial film boiling
or transition boiling. The hot part surface is covered
with vapor blanket and liquid layer, alternatively. The
heat flux increases after experiencing a minimum at the
well-known Liedenfrost point. In this stage, the heat
transfer is fast due to the heat of vaporization, the agi-
tation of quenchant by the motion of numerous bubbles
and the fast bubble disengagement from interface. The
heat transfer reaches a maximum value, known as the
critical heat flux (CHF). With the decrease in the part
temperature, the formation of bubbles becomes slow
and tends to occur at nucleation sites, i.e., the tiny pits
or scratches at the part surface. In the nucleate boil-
ing, the bubble motion also increases the heat trans-
fer by agitating the liquid near the surface and there-
after results in rapid cooling. The heat transfer is still
very high until the surface temperature drops below the
boiling point of the quenchant. As the part tempera-
ture further drops, the heat transfer takes place mostly
through convection, which depends on the flow of liquid
at the part surface, or conduction at some liquid stag-
nation sites, such as the holes or the upstream surfaces
of parts. The complex flow results in great difference in
heat transfer rate at different surfaces, especially for the
parts with complex geometry. The non-uniform cooling
can promote the evolution of internal stress and lead to
the distortion or ever cracking of parts. As metal parts
with a U-channel section are quenched in an oil quen-
chant, it is found that quench distortion is dependent
on the orientation of the channel section[11] . Integrating
fluid flow simulations of the quenchant into the exist-
ing thermal-microstructural-mechanical models will be
a significant progress for the quenching process. In this
paper, we focus on the fluid dynamics simulation and
the integration with heat transfer and thermal struc-
ture response to the fluid flow.
1 Models
A model for the fluid-thermal-structure events occur-
ring in immersion quenching is developed. The simu-
lations of phase transformation, microstructure, ther-
mal stresses, dilatational phase transformation strains
and transformation-induced plasticity have been ex-
tensively studied and some mature models have been
developed[1-2] . In this work, the structure simula-
tion only focuses on the transformation of austenite
to martensite, the volume variation resulting from the
phase transformation, the residual stress due to thermal
expansion mismatch, and the deformation of treated
parts. The austenite-martensite transformation is mod-
elled by the use of the law established by Koistinen and
J. Shanghai Jiaotong Univ. (Sci.), 2011, 16(2): 137-140
Marburger[12]. An elastoplastic constitutive model is
used to calculate the stress and model the deformation
of the part.
The vapor boiling, nucleate boiling, liquid convection
and the transition regimes between these heat trans-
fer regimes in quenching process are such complex that
there is no adequate description on fluid dynamics and
thermal processes available for simulations. Although
there are many CFD commercial softwares, such as
CFX, Fluent, CFD2000, FIDAP and STAR-CD, it is
still not possible to solve the unusual phenomenon. A
potential solution is to program user subroutines based
on sophisticated empirical formulations and integrate
into the software. In this work, we develop a user code
for the FLUENT.
The heat transfer between the hot solid surface and
the quenchant in the nucleate boiling regime is at-
tributed to three parts: evaporation, quenching and liq-
uid convection, according to the heat flux partitioning
model known as the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(RPI) model of subcooled boiling[13] . A radiation to
liquid through a gas film and a conductive heat trans-
fer are involved into the calculation of total heat flux to
model the heat transfer during film boiling. The film
thickness as a function of wavelength, the departing va-
por size and frequency are determined from empirical
analysis results[14-15] .
2 Results and Discussion
3D computations are performed for the quenching
of a part with a channel section in a water tank of
200 mm×200 mm×400 mm (length×width×high). The
simulation domain is composed of a symmetrical quar-
ter of the tank and a symmetrical quarter of channel-
section part immersed in the center of the tank and
200 mm above the tank bottom. The part (Fig. 1) has
the same geometry as the experiment[11] . In Fig. 1,
the positions of A, B, C and D in the scatter plots
are corresponding to the point A, B, C and D in the
contour graphs, respectively; d is the geometrical sum
of the x and y coordinates of the concerned surface
(Fig. 1(a) and Fig. 1(b)) or the centre line of the side
surface (Fig.1(c)); K is the heat transfer coefficient.
The no-slip boundary condition is imposed on all of
the modelling boundaries except the symmetrical faces
of the tank and the part, and the tank top treated
as an open boundary. The fluid-thermal and thermal-
structure simulations are performed in sequence. Cou-
pling of the two simulations is implemented by trans-
ferring the part temperature distribution at a time step
of 2 s. The effect of part deformation on the fluid flow
is ignored. This is reasonable as the spring-back or the
distortion of the part is very small[11] . The fluid proper-
ties including density, viscosity, specific heat and con-
ductivity are considered as a function of temperature
J. Shanghai Jiaotong Univ. (Sci.), 2011, 16(2): 137-140
Fig. 1 Heat transfer coefficient along the U-channel profile (scatter plots) and the distribution of heat transfer coefficient
(contour graphs) of the part at quenching time of 60 s
while the vapor properties are assumed to be constant.
The heat transfer rate from the part to the quen-
chant strongly depends on the fluid dynamics charac-
teristics, especially for the multiphase flow, where the
concentration and the behaviours of gas at part sur-
face determine the mechanism of heat transfer. As an
example, the difference in heat transfer coefficient in
the nucleate boiling is shown in Fig. 1. Differing from
the quenching of large size parts with simple geometry,
such as cylinders, the big difference in the heat transfer
results in a non-uniform cooling and a difference in the
surface temperature. The non-uniform heating or cool-
ing seldom occurs in the quenching of large and simple
139
parts due to high thermal conductivity of steels. The
different surface temperatures, in turn, lead to remark-
able difference in the local cooling rate. For example,
a 50 ℃ difference corresponds to the variation of the
heat transfer coefficient in about 800 W/(m2 ·K−1 ) for
oil quenchants in the nucleate boiling regime.
The large temperature gradient in the part is the ma-
jor driving force for the thermal stress and the internal
stress associated with phase transformations. Due to
the remarkable non-uniform heat transfer (Fig. 1), an
observable spring-back, a large non-uniform plastic flow
and great residual stresses in the part are found after
quenching (Fig. 2). In Fig. 2, the white mesh and the
140
coloured solid denote the initial and the finial part ge-
ometries after and before quenching, respectively.
Fig. 2 Deformation and stress distribution of the part
3 Conclusion
Fluid flow simulation is coupled with thermal-
structural modelling, which provides critical informa-
tion relating to the residual stress for quenching pro-
cess. This allows the engineers to control the quenching
system to optimize the residual stress and microstruc-
ture and thereafter to minimize distortion, fatigue, wear
and corrosion.
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