Development of Improvements to Quench Tank Agitation through CFD Analysis

Achieving the desired hardness and uniformity of quenched parts following heat treatment requires sufficient agitation within the quench tank. Many existing quench tanks were designed without a detailed consideration of the flow patterns generated within the quench tank, and so may suffer from poor flow through the load.

For an existing quench facility, improvement to the as-quenched material properties was sought through a planned upgrade to the quench system. In order to ensure that the revised design would be effective, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study of the quench tank was performed.

Those analyses showed that while the revisions would result in significant improvements, there would be notable variations in fluid velocities across the load that could lead to distortion and variable properties. Additional design iterations were performed to further improve the agitation design and investigate the effect of loading pattern on the uniformity of flow through the load. The final recommendation was installed and results from production trials show a significant improvement in quench performance. The CFD analysis process is outlined along with results from key simulations in the development of the revised design.