Quenching and Distortion Analyses in Aluminum

Aluminum components are heat treated to achieve strength and hardness by solution treating, quenching and aging. Quenching is critical as the material has to be cooled at rates to allow for hardening elements to remain in solution, but the rate has to be controlled to avoid distortion, which is associated with the geometry of the piece, as heavy components have sections of different volume, which will cool at different rates. The aim of this work is to evaluate the variation of the heat transfer coefficients that take occur in pieces made of a heat treatable wrought aluminum alloy cooled in different media. Samples from the same alloy were machined into a modified version of the Navy C test to measure the distortion on them when cooled in the same condition. The results from these trials were compared with those predicted by the finite element method.