Effect of External Forced Flow and Boiling Film on Heat Transfer of AISI 4140 Steel Horizontal Rod During Direct Quenching

The effects of rod falling and moving, external flow field, boiling film and radiation were investigated on fluid flow and heat transfer of AISI 4140 steel horizontal rod during direct quenching by mathematical modeling. The flow field and heat transfer in quenching tank were simulated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method considering falling and moving of rods during process. Therefore, modeling of flow field was done by a fixed-mesh method for general moving objects equations, and then, energy equation was solved with a numerical approach so that effect of boiling film heat flux was considered as a source term in energy equation for solid-liquid boundary. Simulated results were verified by comparing with published and experimental data and there was a good agreement between them. Also, the effects of external forced flow and film boiling were investigated on heat flux output, temperature distribution and heat transfer coefficient of rod. Also simulated results determined optimum quenching time for this process.