A New Approach to Study Vapor Transport in Water Boiling Process and Its Application to Estimate Neighboring Effect in Cluster Quenching Environment

Water quenching is a common heat treatment process in automotive industry. Because of the large temperature drop, around 400°C in the case of cylinder head/block quenching, the heat transfer mechanisms are very different in each of the three boiling regimes and the quenching efficiency is further coupled to the vapor transport on the metal surface. In this paper, we utilized a validated numerical method to model the boiling process and developed a visualization procedure to study the vapor transport on the metal surface. Then we use the finding to explain the difference in the thermocouple data in various location for a single object quenching environment. Once the effect of vapor transport on quenching efficiency is fully understood, we apply the method to estimate the neighboring effect in the cluster quenching environment.