Benchmarking of Mathematical Models for Quenching Operations: A Proposal

Mathematical modeling of quenching operations has reached a level of maturity that allows predicting the metallurgical response for a given component with a certain degree of confidence. However, in most cases, model parameters need to be adjusted in order to obtain good fit with experimental data related to a particular application. In contrast, in this paper we present an experimental model that may be used by the modeling community for benchmarking purposes.

The system consists of a horizontal AISI 304 stainless steel disc that is rapidly cooled by a water column impinging on its lower surface. The disc was instrumented with five pairs of thermocouples (distributed along the disc radius) to register the thermal response near the lower and upper disc surfaces. While the thermal responses were acquired, the displacement in the vertical direction of a point located at the center of the upper surface was measured and events at the surface in contact with the water column were videotaped. In this fashion, a complete picture of the thermo-mechanical phenomena may be obtained. The results indicate that the model is capable of responding to the various modes of heat transfer occurring upon quenching while showing appreciable distortion. Moreover, the details of the wetting front kinematics could be precisely followed.

As an example of the applicability of the data, the thermal responses were used to estimate the distributed heat transfer boundary condition at the lower surface by solving the inverse heat conduction problem considering constant properties and two-dimensional heat flow in an axisymmetric domain.