Improvement in Quenching Uniformity through Flow Conditioning

Historically, the design of liquid quenching systems has relied on providing a set amount of agitation power for the size of the tank (horsepower/gallon). With the advent of computer flow analysis tools, it has been increasingly possible to refine the quench system design to ensure that the flow created by the agitation system is effectively delivered to the load, resulting in an increase in quench performance.

The current paper considers the effect of one element of a quench system design, an egg-crate flow straightener, on the uniformity of quenching both within a single layer of parts and between part layers. Distortion data is combined with CFD analyses of four different variations of a single quench system to determine the flow attributes that result in improved quench performance.