Opportunities and Challenges In Industrial Carburizing Modeling and Optimization

Industrial heat treatment operations are getting significantly driven by the carbon footprint and stringent quality metrics in addition to the cost competitiveness. As a consequence, the role of heat treatment process modeling has been expanded from design and analysis stage to process optimization and control. The present work showcases some of these emerging applications of carburizing simulations, including lean and robust product design, process optimization and resolution of quality problems, such as distortion control. The integrated process model capturing thermo-metallurgical transformations and its ability to predict microstructure, residual stress and distortion will be described for carburizing process. In the present work, the integrated model has been used in a design of experiment framework for efficient optimization and probabilistic simulation to solve distortion problems. This efficient methodology was utilized to reduce the mean as well as variations in carburizing distortion by controlling the chemistry specifications. The presentation will also highlight major challenges in the heat treatment modeling and its slow dissemination within heat treating industry, even after several decades of proven success. The industry need for better and efficient usage of these methodologies will be presented.