Simulation of Heat Transfer and Residual Stresses from Cooling Curves Obtained in Quenching Studies

This paper describes the use of computational simulation of heat transfer and resulting residual stress obtained by quenching a standard probe into different quench oils. Cooling curves were obtained after immersing a preheated 12.-mm diameter × 60 mm cylindrical Inconel 600 (Wolfson) probe with a Type K thermocouple inserted into the geometric center into a mineral oil quenchant as described in ASTM D 6200. Four different oil quenchants were used. Three of these oils were typical commercial quench oils and one was a used quench oil from a heat treating shop. Heat transfer coefficients were estimated using HT-Mod, a recently released commercial computational code. Using the cooling curve temperature—time data, the temperature distribution within the probe and the corresponding residual stresses were calculated using ABAQUS. These results of this work illustrate potential benefits of computational simulation to examine the potential impact of different quenchants and quenching conditions on a heat treatment process.