Impact of Thermocouple Locations to HTC Accuracy by Comparing 3-D CFD and Inverse Heat Conduction Problem in Gear Quenching Process

With the advancement of CFD and FEA, the trend of utilizing numerical models to predict the outcome of metal quenching processes not only is irresistible but also is accelerating. One of the popular methods to obtain the heat transfer coefficients in the gas metal quenching process is the inverse HTC method. Its great advantage is that the inverse HTC method can provide heat transfer coefficients (HTCs) to FEA structural analyses without knowing the details of the flow and thermal process of the quench media. In solving the HTC problem using inverse method, it is well possible the solution may be sensitive to the variation of field data, including the location of the thermocouples. In this research, the sensibility of thermocouple location in the inverse HTC method is investigated by comparing the solutions obtained by CFD. For metal gas quenching problem, the flow pattern as well as heat transfer in the metal can be obtained by directly solving the Navier-Stokes equation as well the heat transfer equation. Once the sensibility of thermocouple location is well understood, the conclusion could be used as a guideline for thermocouple placement to obtain the temperature history for metal gas quenching distortion prediction.