M. TEODORESCU, J. DEMURGER, J. WENDENBAUM, ASCOMETAL CREAS, Hagondange, France

Summary: Heat treatments are currently used to optimize the mechanical properties of steel parts. They generally submit the part to deformations. Our work is focused on the prediction of these deformations. At ASCOMETAL Company, the FEM Analysis has been successfully used to improve number of metal forming processes. Its application to heat treatments is thus very attractive. This paper deals with the simulation of different kind of cooling processes (air, water and oil quenching) performed on C-ring samples for different steel grades. The 3D FE FORGE3TTTŪ code used for the simulation integrates a coupled thermo-mechanical-metallurgical model, which allows us to correctly take into account the phase transformations. The governing models are briefly presented herein. All input data are experimentally determined or are issued from the literature. The simulation and experimental results are analyzed and compared in terms of temperature evolution, final microstructure and part displacements. A good agreement is noticed.