Prediction of the Temperature- Time Cooling Curves for Three-Dimensional Aluminum Products during Spray Quenching

Abstrac t . This study aims at developing a universal approach to predicting the tempera turet ime characteristics for three-dimensional aluminum parts during quenching with water sprays. The validity of correlations recently developed by one of the authors, which relate the local heat transfer rate to the spray hydrodynamic parameters, is examined for nonuniform sprays. A mathematical relation is presented for characterizing the spatial distributions of the hydrodynamic parameters. By combining the local heat transfer correlations with the spatial distribution equations of these parameters, it is shown how a spatial distribution of the surface heat transfer rate can be derived. This distribution provides the vital boundary conditions needed to numerically simulate the three-dimensional heat diffusion occurring in a spray cooled part and the resultant tempera turet ime cooling curve at every point in the part. The validity of this approach is demonstrated by comparing numerical predictions with experimental measurements on a three-dimensional rectangular aluminum block subject to a nonuniform spray cooling boundary.