Numerical and Experimental Study of Aluminum Casting During Water Quenching

This paper summarizes the recently improved computational methodology to numerically predict the heat transfer characteristics present during immersion water quench processes. Main applicability of the presented method lays in virtual experimental investigation of the heat treatment of cast aluminum parts adopted in automotive, aerospace and processing industries. The boiling phase change process between the hot object and a sub-cooled liquid domain is handled by using the Euler-Eulerian multi-fluid modeling approach, which is implemented within the commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code AVL FIRE^®. Separate computational domains constructed for the quenched solid part and the fluid flow are numerically coupled at the interface. While for the fluid domain conservation equations are solved in the context of multi-fluid modeling approach, only the energy equation is solved to predict the thermal field in the solid region. Comparison between measured and numerically predicted temperatures at different monitoring locations within the aluminum test casting is presented. Two quench orientations of the test casting are investigated under the conditions of both agitated and non-agitated water at constant water temperature of 347 K. The transient temperatures predicted in the test casting by the presented model are generally in good agreement with the measurement data.