Calculation and experimental study on heating temperature field of super-high strength aluminum alloy thick plate

Stepped heating treatment has been applied to aluminum alloy thick plate to improve the mechanical performance and corrosion resistance. Accurate temperature control of the plate is the difficulty in engineering application. The heating process, the calculation of surface heat transfer coefficient and the accurate temperature control method were studied based on measured heating temperature for the large-size thick plate. The results show that, the temperature difference between the surface and center of the thick plate is small. Based on the temperature uniformity, the surface heat transfer coefficient was calculated, and it is constant below 300 °C, but grows greatly over 300 °C. Consequently, a lumped parameter method (LPM) was developed to predict the plate temperature. A stepped solution treatment was designed by using LPM, and verified by finite element method (FEM) and experiments. Temperature curves calculated by LPM and FEM agree well with the experimental data, and the LPM is more convenient in engineering application.