Y. Gooroochurn, ESI Group, LYON, France; O. Morisot, ESI Group, Bloomfield Hills, MI

Summary: Quenching is one of the widely used heat treatment process dedicated to components that require being hard in core and on the outside. Very often, Quenching is performed in bulk or batch where a batch can contain hundred of components arranged in a certain way. The process consists in heating the components within a batch till they reach uniform austenitic temperature and then dropped in a coolant to achieve the hardness required. The simplicity of this process makes it economical compared to other heat treatment processes and as a consequence it is widely used in industry. Batch quenching presents nevertheless some challenges in terms of obtaining the desirable parts quality. Defects during batch quenching can come from several aspects of the quenching process such as: - Cooling of components within the batch occurring faster at one end due to slow dropping of batch in quenchant. “Plunging velocity effect and part orientation during plunging effect” - Non-uniform wetting of certain components of the batch due to their arrangement and location within the batch. - Improper wetting of certain components due rapid dropping of components in coolant creating vapor. Part defects may include excessive out of roundness in some undesirable location of the components and sometime cracking. The appearance of these defects amplifies as - The geometry of the components become more complex - The number of components within the batch increase to meet production goals and - The efficiency of the quenchant becomes low due to less frequent coolant change. Numerical simulation can be used to predict phase transformation, deformation and stresses on such complex scenarios and allow us to optimize the process, the arrangement of the components within a batch and the plunging speed of the batch in the coolant in order to reduce vapor creation and still meet the production line. In this paper we will use finite element simulation on a simple component to show part defects based on the part orientation aspect during plunging. Here we will show that the mechanical behavior of a component differs whether it is dropped vertically or horizontally at a certain speed. The other aspects of batch quenching will be studied in separate papers at a later time.