R. D. Sisson, M. Maniruzzaman, S. Ma, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA
Quenching is a critical heat treating process that is designed to provide the specified strength and toughness to steels. However, uncontrolled quenching is frequently determined to be responsible deformation and cracking of parts. To control the quenching process a sensitive, reliable and robust quench probe is needed that can be used in a commercial quench tank to quantitatively determine the "effectiveness of the quench". In addition a methodology must be developed to incorporate the data from the quench probe into the quenching control system. These issues will be addressed in this paper.
Summary: While quenching is a critical commercial heat treating process the current systems to control and optimize this process are not fully developed. In this paper the need for a reliable, robust quench probe will be presented followed by the possible use of a quench probe for process control.
