International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 44 (2013) 358–364

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International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhff

Investigation of heat transfer coefficient during quenching in various

cooling agents
A. Buczek, T. Telejko ⇑
AGH University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Metals Engineering and Industrial Computer Science, Al. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Kraków, Poland

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Heat transfer coefficients, HTCs, at the surface of a metal sample during immersion quenching were mea-
Received 6 January 2012 sured and evaluated using numerical procedures. The boundary inverse heat conduction problem has
Received in revised form 7 June 2013 been defined and solved. A FEM self-developed computer code has been used to obtain a solution to
Accepted 8 July 2013
the direct problem. The sensitivity of the method enabled us to examine the effect of various quenching
Available online 20 August 2013
parameters on the heat transfer for two mineral oils and a polymer quenchant. At 800 °C the HTC values
were equal to 0.5 kW/(m2 K) and 3.2 kW/(m2 K), for mineral oils and a polymer coolant, respectively.
Keywords:
They increased to 4.7 kW/(m2 K) – oil A, 6.0 kW/(m2 K) – oil B and 7.4 kW/(m2 K) – polymer, respec-
Heat transfer coefficient
Boundary inverse heat conduction problem
tively. The peak of HTC was sharp and occurred at a narrow temperature interval between 520 and 550 °C
Quenching for the oils, whereas for the polymer, the peak was lower by approx. 100 K and flat over 100–120 K inter-
val. Subsequently HTC decreased, and at 150 °C the values were 0.5 kW/(m2 K) and 2.0 kW/(m2 K),
for mineral oils and a water polymer coolant, respectively.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction geometrical dimensions of cylindrical samples. Sugianto et al.

Quenching is a thermal process frequently used to obtain re-
quired mechanical properties of steel products. The item is heated
above the austenitization temperature (approximately 900 °C) and
subsequently cooled at a sufficiently fast rate. The quenching oper-
ation is generally carried out either by immersing the hot metallic
components in a cold liquid bath, or by spraying them with water
or an airwater mixture. The subject of heat transfer at the solidliq-
uid interface is widely discussed in the literature. Spray cooling,
with its wide industrial applications, was considered e.g. by Ham-
mad et al. (2004) and Chen et al. (1999), for water jet cooling, and
Puschmann and Specht, 2004 and de Oliveira et al. (2002) for air-
water atomizers. Water curtains, nozzles and atomizers are widely
used and an extensive review of stateofart in water cooling of steel
and aluminum during continuous casting was presented by Seng-
upta et al. (2005). Heat transfer studies at runout tables during
hot rolling have been comprehensive reviewed by Hernandez-Avi-
la (1999).
The number of reports dedicated to immersion cooling, mainly
water quenching, is significantly lower. Kim and Oh (2001) used a
carbon steel sample heated to 500 °C and subsequently cooled by
an air fan or in a water bath. Heat transfer during water quenching
of cast aluminum has been experimentally investigated by Xiao
et al. (2010). Heming et al. (2003) studied heat transfer for various
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +48 12 6172584; fax: +48 12 6175079.
E-mail address: telejko@agh.edu.pl (T. Telejko).
(2009) compared two different techniques of HTC determination:
lumped heat capacity method and inverse heat transfer method.
Buczek and Telejko (2004) reported results of experiments per-
formed under various cooling conditions, including position of
the active surface of the sample, its initial temperature and water
temperature. Heat transfer on the sample-quenchant interface in
media other than water was investigated by Fernandes and Prabhu
(2007), who used brine, water, mineral and palm oils and subse-
quently five vegetable oils (2008). Other types of quenching fluids
include polymer–water solutions (Eshraghi-kakhki et al., 2011)
and nanofluids (Coursey and Kim, 2008; Babu and Prasanna Kumar,
2011).
The desired immersion quenching speed is achieved by provid-
ing a properly selected coolant. Frequently a choice is made upon
the basis of cooling rate curves determined in the experimental
procedure according to the International Standard ISO 9950
(1995). A cylindrical sample 12.5 mm in diameter and 60 mm in
length, manufactured from the NiCrFe alloy (INCONEL 600), is
cooled from 850 °C and the temperature measured by a sensor
placed at the geometrical centre of the sample. The maximum
cooling rate, the corresponding temperature and the cooling rate
at 300 °C are the characteristic parameters of the quenching fluid.
A more powerful and effective technique is the application of
numerical simulation to model heat transfer during quenching.
The calculated temperature distribution at selected internal points
of the body helps us to determine microstructure and mechani-
cal properties of the metal and thermal stresses arising from

0142-727X/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatfluidflow.2013.07.004
 A. Buczek, T. Telejko / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 44 (2013) 358–364 359

Nomenclature

a1, a2, a3, a4 coefficients of Hermite polynomial r StefanBoltzmann constant

A surface area s time
c specific heat U error norm
h heat transfer coefficient
H Hermite polynomial shape function Subscripts
k thermal conductivity a, b the beginning and the end of time interval respectively
l length of cylindrical sample c surface of the casing
m number of time steps end end of computation time
n number of temperature measurement points gap air gap between sample and casing
Q_ heat flux i, j index
qv volume density of internal heat sources m number of time steps in numerical calculus
r, z cylindrical coordinates n number of temperature measuring points (sensors)
R radius of cylindrical sample s surface of a sample
T temperature w quenching fluid
v internal heat sources
Greek symbols
d width of air gap Superscripts
e emissivity ex experimental measurements
n supportive variable num numerical simulations
q density

temperature gradients. However boundary conditions of the Fou-

rier–Kirchhoff equation have to be known to solve a heat transfer
problem. They are usually defined by the quenchant temperature
and the heat transfer coefficient at the cooled surface. During
quench hardening, heat flux transferred to the coolant rapidly var-
ies in time and HTC cannot be calculated or measured by standard
techniques. In such cases the effective procedure is the formulation
and solution of the boundary inverse heat conduction problem
(Buczek and Telejko, 2004). The method consists of numerical
selection of boundary conditions providing a temperature distribu-
tion in the body not differing, within accuracy limits, from the as-
Fig. 1. Test sample equipped with temperature sensors.
sumed one. The temperature profile is measured by sensors placed
at selected internal points of the sample during cooling in different exp
where T numi; j ðsÞ; T i; j ðsÞ are computed and measured values of tem-
agents and compared with computation results. The minimization
perature in selected points inside the sample.
procedure gives the optimum heat transfer coefficient at the cooled
T num
i; j ðsÞ were obtained from the solution of heat conduction
surface.
equation given below
In this paper the method of HTC determination during still and
   
agitation quenching is presented. It allows us to study heat transfer @T 1 @ @T @ @T
qc ¼ r kr þ kz þ qv ð2Þ
in a movable cooling agent with precisely determined flow veloc- @ s r @r @r @z @z
ity. The sensitivity of the method to various cooling conditions
has been tested. Two mineral oils, A and B, and a polymeric quen- The boundary conditions are formulated in the following form
chant have been used in the experiments. The impact of coolant @Tðr ¼ R; z; sÞ
ageing and its temperature on heat transfer coefficient have also kr ¼ hgap1 ðsÞ½TðR; z; sÞ  T w  ð3Þ
@r
been studied. The repeatability of the results during HTC estima-
tion in a flowing coolant has been confirmed. @T ðr; z ¼ 0; sÞ
kz ¼ hz¼0 ðsÞ½T ðr; 0; sÞ  T w  ð4Þ
@r
2. Problem formulation
@T ðr; z ¼ l; sÞ
kz ¼ hgap2 ðsÞ½T ðr; l; sÞ  T w  ð5Þ
The boundary conditions of the heat conduction equation have @r
to be defined in the boundary inverse heat conduction problem. In
The initial condition is defined by uniform temperature in the
the present case effects of the cooling process are represented by
sample volume T0
the temperature distribution at selected points of the test sample,
shown in Fig. 1. Tðr; z; s ¼ 0Þ ¼ T 0 ð6Þ
The general form of the function approximating the heat trans-
Heat transfer coefficients hgap1 and hgap2 used in Eqs. (3) and (5)
fer coefficient or the heat flux density is assumed in the calculus
have been calculated considering radiation and conduction in an air
procedure. The problem is solved when the particular form of that
gap between a metal probe and a casing from the following equation:
function is determined under the assumed quality criterion. This
criterion consists in the minimum error norm value expressed by rðT 2s þ T 2wÞðT s þT w Þ kair
the following equation: hgap ¼ þ ð7Þ
1
þ AAcs 1
1 d
Xn Xm h i2 es ec
U¼ i¼1 j¼1
T num ex
i; j ðsÞ  T i; j ðsÞ ð1Þ
where es = ec = 0.79 (Modest, 2003).
360 A. Buczek, T. Telejko / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 44 (2013) 358–364

The last term in Eq. (7) also represents the contribution of con- distances of 2, 4, 6 and 19 mm from the active surface. Tempera-
vection in case of air movement in the air gap with very small ture was measured using K type thermocouples with 80 lm diam-
Grashof numbers. Temperature of the casing internal surface has eter wires protected by a 500 lm diameter sheath. The output
been assumed equal to coolant temperature. signals were measured and recorded by a high accuracy AC/DC
The computation was performed using a finite element model data acquisition system operating at extremely high frequencies.
and a self-developed computer program. The inverse problem The probe was heated to 850 °C in a resistance furnace.
was solved by conjugate gradients and Choleski methods. The After equalizing the temperature profile inside the sample, it
approximation function was formulated by a spline function of was immediately immersed in the coolant having various, but stea-
the Hermite polynomials throughout the total computation time dy in time, temperatures. The experimental set-up, shown in Fig. 2,
h0, sendi. For each elementary time interval hsa, sbi the Hermite allowed us to investigate heat transfer in motionless and moveable
polynomial shape function H describing the HTC versus time rela- liquids. The active surface was positioned downwards. Quenchant
tion has the form temperature was continuously adjusted by the control system
including temperature controller 4, oil heater 2, oil water cooler
hz¼0 ðsÞ ¼ a1 H01 ðnÞ þ a2 H11 ðnÞ þ a3 H02 ðnÞ þ a4 H12 ðnÞ ð8Þ 13 and temperature sensitive elements 3a and 3b. Temperature
sensor 3a was placed in a storage tank 1 and used during still
H01 ðnÞ ¼ 1  3n2 þ 2n3 quenching. Sensor 3b measured temperature in a quenching tank
H02 ðnÞ ¼ 3n2  2n3 6 during experiments in a movable quenchant.
The probe was immersed in the storage tank 1 (position 9a) for
H11 ðnÞ ¼ ðn  2n2 þ n3 ÞDs
still quenching or in tank 6 (position 9b) after setting the desired
H12 ðnÞ ¼ ðn3  n2 ÞDs value of quenchant flow velocity performed by circulating pump
5 and inverter 12. The volume of quenching agent in a storage tank
si  sa was 30 dm3. Both an appropriate quenchant volume and a tem-
n¼ sa 6 si 6 sb ; Ds ¼ sb  sa
Ds perature control system maintained a steady fluid temperature
The coefficients a1, a2, a3, a4 were obtained from the solution to for the duration of the experiment. A 100 Hz data sampling fre-
an inverse problem for all elementary time intervals. The number quency was applied to record temperature measurements in the
and the position of spline nodes were adjusted taking into account sample.
the minimal value of the mean temperature error DT given by the It should be noted that the INCONEL 600 does not undergo any
following equation: phase transformation at temperatures below 850 °C. Therefore the
term representing internal heat sources in Eq. (2) has been set to
m  
1 X n X
 num ex  qv = 0.
DT ¼ T i; j ðsÞ  T i; j ðsÞ ð9Þ
m n i¼1 j¼1

The location of knots has been selected step by step analyzing 4. Results and discussion
the temperature curves and the time derivative of temperature
dT/ds. The computations have been stopped when the difference Numerous experiments and simulations have been performed
between the two consecutive values of error norm differed by less for various quenchants. Some exemplary experimental cooling
than 5%, which provided a repetitive solution of the problem. The curves recorded by temperature sensors are shown in Fig. 3.
temperature data T ex num It refers to quenching in oil A at 40 °C. The recorded tempera-
i; j ; T i; j were obtained from measurements at
selected points inside the test sample and numerical simulation ture profiles in points 1, 2 and 3 were substituted to the inverse
of the quenching process, respectively. As a result the HTC versus procedure. The HTC versus time function was approximated by a
time relation has been defined as a spline function of polynomials spline function consisted of Hermite polynomials. The mean tem-
given by Eq. (8). For practical use in numerical applications, the perature error DT defined by Eq. (9) has been controlled to estab-
heat transfer coefficient was expressed as a function of a surface lish the number and position of spline nodes. In the present case
temperature. That temperature was calculated from the direct
solution of the heat conduction equation carried out in each time
step.
The validation of inverse procedure has been performed by
replacing measurements with the temperature distribution ob-
tained from a solution to a direct problem. Several types of bound-
ary conditions, including non-linear, have been applied in
numerical tests. The errors of the inverse HTC approximation did
not exceed 0.6% (Buczek and Telejko, 2004).

3. Experimental procedure

The method of investigation is based upon temperature mea-

surements carried out at selected locations in the previously hot
sample after immersion in a coolant. Thus, the response of a tem-
perature profile to an unknown (sought) boundary input was
determined in the experimental test. The schema of the specimen
is shown in Fig. 1. The main element is the probe metal cylinder
20 mm in length and diameter placed in a cylindrical casing filled
with air. Both probe and casing were made of INCONEL 600. The Fig. 2. Schematic of experimental setup: 1 – quenchant storage tank; 2 – resistance
heater, 3a, 3b – resistance temperature sensors, 4 – temperature controller,
thickness of the casing was 0.5 mm. The air gap has a width of 5 – circulating pump, 6 – quenching tank, 7 – coolant overflow, 8 – bypass, 9a,
5 mm to reduce convection. Four temperature sensors were 9b – test samples, 10 – data acquisition system, 11 – thermocouples, 12 – inverter,
located in the holes drilled perpendicular to the sample axis at 13 – water cooler.
 A. Buczek, T. Telejko / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 44 (2013) 358–364 361

Fig. 5. HTC as a function of time. Oil A maintained at 40 °C.

Fig. 3. Temperature readings at thermocouples locations. Oil A maintained at 40 °C.

they were set at sixteen time points: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 15,

25, 50, 100, 200 s. The higher concentration of the nodes at the
beginning of quenching allowed us to provide better accuracy of
simulation results. Differences in measured and calculated temper-
ature at the points of thermocouples locations are shown in Fig. 4.
The highest discrepancies took the form of a sharp peak approach-
ing 10 K and occurred at point P2 situated 4 mm from the cooled
surface. For neighboring points P1 and P3 the errors did not exceed
5.8 K throughout the experiment duration. The mean temperature
error DT calculated from Eq. (9) was 2.1 K. Small measurement and
fitting errors proved high accuracy in simulation of the phenomena
by the mathematical and numerical models developed. Similar re-
sults were obtained for oil B. Fig. 6. HTC as a function of surface temperature. Oil A maintained at 40 °C.
The dependence of HTC on time is plotted in Fig. 5.
Surface temperature computed from the direct problem pro-
vides the possibility to get HTC versus temperature relation, shown
in Fig. 6. This form can be directly applied in heat transfer calcula-
tions of cooling in liquids. The shape of the curve suggests that
cooling proceeds in the way typical for boiling in liquids. The in-
crease of HTC against temperature drop is nearly linear up to the
first boiling crisis, except for the few initial seconds starting from
the moment of sample immersion in the quenching tank. Further
drop of surface temperature results in a fast drop of HTC up to
350 °C. In the successive stage of cooling a small decrease of
HTC is observed.
Fig. 7 presents selected plots of the HTC versus surface temper-
ature relations for mineral oils A and B, while the related heat flux
change is depicted in Fig. 8. For both curves peaks were found at
temperature approaching 550 °C, consistent with the results of Fer-
nandes and Prabhu (2007).
Fig. 7. HTC as a function of surface temperature for oils A and B maintained at
50 °C.

hFig. 4. Compatibility i of measured and calculated temperature in the sample Fig. 8. Heat flux as a function of surface temperature for oils A and B. Oils
T num ex
i; j ðsÞ  T i; j ðsÞ . Oil A maintained at 40 °C. maintained at 50 °C.
362 A. Buczek, T. Telejko / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 44 (2013) 358–364
It shows that heat transfer from the INCONEL specimen to oil B
was enhanced in comparison with oil A. The heat flux peaks oc-
curred at almost the same temperature, but they remarkably dif-
fered in value. The higher heat flux was observed for oil B
(3.2 MW/m2), while for oil A it was 2.5 MW/m2.
During industrial quenching the coolant temperature rises with
time, despite the application of cooling systems. The temperature
of the quenchant may locally increase by even 20 K. It is therefore
of interest how temperature of the cooling medium affects the heat
transfer process. Some such results are plotted in Figs. 9 and 10.
It is commonly believed that increase in fluid temperature al-
ways results in decrease of heat transfer coefficient at the hot sur-
face (Tensi et al., 1994). Increases of heat transfer coefficient with
increasing fluid temperature have, however, also been reported,
e.g. in cooling experiments by us (Buczek and Telejko, 2004).
In the experiments now reported, a 20 K raise of quenchant
temperature results in a noticeable increase of the heat transfer
coefficient, particularly in the region neighboring the first boiling
crisis (see Figs. 9 and 10). For oil A the smallest and the biggest val-
ues of HTC are 4.0 kW/(m2 K) and 4.7 kW/(m2 K), respectively,
which corresponds to approx. 17% difference. A similar effect oc-
curs for oil B, however the increase (from 5.6 kW/(m2 K) to
6.0 kW/(m2 K)) is not so high and does not exceed 8%. It should
be noticed that for both mineral oils no significant differences in
HTC were observed for surface temperatures below 320–400 °C
and above 600–650 °C, despite the change of fluid temperature.
The increase in HTC with quenchant temperature can be ex-
plained on the basis of the work of Fernandes and Prabhu (2008),
who showed a relation between heat transfer increase and coolant
viscosity. Smaller viscosity at higher fluid temperatures creates
better conditions to nucleate boiling. This results in higher heat
Fig. 9. Effect of quenchant temperature on HTC for oil A.
Fig. 10. Effect of quenchant temperature on HTC for oil B.
transfer coefficients and extends the unstable film boiling region,
where nucleate boiling is dominant.
For industrial applications, the effect of coolant ageing on sta-
bility of heat transfer at the solidliquid interface is important
regarding price and quantity. It is obvious that ageing (defined as
number of quench cycles or utilization time) should influence cool-
ing properties of the medium. Fig. 11 shows results illustrating two
examples of HTC – temperature curves for the same coolant used
under industrial conditions. Increase of heat transfer with oil utili-
zation time, due to changes in chemical and physical properties, is
expected. However in the present case, after a 2 year-utilization
time, for oil B HTC decreased by approx. 10%, from 5.8 kW/
(m2 K) to 5.3 kW/(m2 K), whereas for oil A, HTC increased by ap-
prox. 10% from 4.3 kW/(m2 K) to 4.6 kW/(m2 K). The results re-
fer to 50 °C oil temperature, but the aformentioned trend was
found throughout the whole temperature interval investigated.
The explanation of this phenomenon needs detailed studies,
including of oil physical and chemical properties and goes beyond
the scope of this paper.
The enhancement of heat transfer with quenchant temperature
has been also observed for used oils A and B. It is not as high as for
new oils, but still significant. An increase of HTC highest value was
estimated at 10% in the temperature range investigated (Fig. 12).
Quench oils are frequently replaced with water solutions of or-
ganic polymers. The latter have many advantages in comparison
with other quenching fluids: they are nonflammable, do not pro-
duce smoke or fumes under operation and provide wide flexibility
of quenching speed. On the other hand, they cause corrosion of
tanks and products despite additions of inhibitors, so their applica-
tion is limited to selected quenching technologies.
Quenching severity can be modified by the solution tempera-
ture and/or polymer concentration. Boiling curves for three various
Fig. 11. Effect of quenchant ageing on HTC for oil A and B maintained at 50 °C.
Fig. 12. Effect of quenchant temperature on HTC for oils A and B used for 2 years.
 A. Buczek, T. Telejko / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 44 (2013) 358–364
Fig. 13. HTC as a function of surface temperature for the experiment with a
polymer quenchant maintained at a temperature of 40 °C. Coolant flow velocity
equal to 0.8 m/s.
tests conducted during agitation quenching in 20% polymer are de-
picted in Fig. 13. They have oillike shape, but the peaks are rather
flat and spread over a wider temperature interval. The peak is lo-
cated between 400 °C and 500 °C and the maximum computed
value of HTC is 7.4 kW/(m2 K) which is higher by 20–30% than for
oils A and B. It should however be underlined, that in case of min-
eral oils still quenching has been performed, while polymer quen-
chant has been agitated by a flow forced by a circulating pump in a
closed circuit. The results were obtained for a sample immersed in
the coolant flowing at 0.8 m/s velocity in a vertical column 6
(Fig. 2).
Despite uniform coolant temperature ensured by the forced
flow, local disturbances of HTC were observed in certain intervals
of surface temperature, particularly between 600 and 800 °C.
In order to estimate the impact of temperature measurement
errors on predicting the heat transfer coefficient we applied our
HTC determination method considering the arbitrary assumed
boundary condition similar to the results obtained in the present
work.
A normal distribution of random errors with constant standard
deviation r has been taken into account. The inexact measurement
data tmea were expressed as tmea = texa ± zr, where texa is the solu-
tion to the direct problem with an exact boundary condition, and
z is a randomly generated variable within 2.576 to 2.576 for a
99% confidence bounds. HTC calculations have been performed
using inaccurate temperature recordings. The maximum errors be-
tween exact and predicted HTC values have not exceeded 0.5% for
r = 4, which corresponds to zr product equal to 10.3 °C.
Systematic errors have been estimated taking two error sources
under consideration: accuracy of thermocouples Ds guaranteed by
the manufacturer and accuracy of the data measurement systems
Fig. 14. Cooling rate curves for experiments performed in: (a) oil A and (b) polymer water solution.
363
Dsys. The component Ds was equal ± 4 °C at temperature up to
1000 °C, while the accuracy class of the data acquisition system
was equal to 0.2%, which correspond to 0.2 mV at the measure-
ment range of 100 mV and Dsys = ±4.88 °C for K type thermocouple.
The total temperature measurement error was expressed as
Dmax = |Ds| + |Dsys|. The texa values have been loaded with Dmax
and HTC has been calculated and compared to the exact boundary
condition. The resultant errors in HTC were below 8%.
It has been found that the repeatability of results for experi-
ments performed in oils was much better than for polymer cool-
ants. Differences between the individual tests were below the
errors arising from temperature measurements. We can therefore
conclude that with respect to oil tests the accuracy of temperature
measurements is dominant and limits the overall measurement
uncertainty for the presented method. However in Fig. 13 it can
be noticed, that for the polymer coolant the overall uncertainty
of HTC determination is much larger than the inaccuracy due to
the temperature measurement alone. In Fig. 14a and b the exam-
ples of cooling rate curves for the samples immersed in oil A and
polymer quenchant respectively, are presented. They were plotted
from indications of a thermocouple No1 shown in Fig. 1.
The curves for oil A are smooth and generally overlap through-
out the whole temperature range. The curves for polymer water
solution are rough and differ from each other, especially at the ini-
tial period of cooling experiment during the growth of a cooling
rate and near its maximum value. The temperature interval, in
which roughness is observed, coincides well with oscillations of
HTC shown in Fig. 13. This can be explained by a different nature
of heat transfer at a cooled surface. Apart from classical boiling
some other phenomena must take place at a metal-coolant inter-
face which results in rapid and frequent variations of a cooling rate
of a sample. Among possible reasons is a periodic precipitation and
dissolution of a polymer film at a cooled surface which dramati-
cally changes a heat flux transported to a coolant.
5. Conclusions
The results confirmed successful application of the proposed
technique for determination of HTC in a quenching process. Tests
have been carried out using two mineral oils and polymer water
solutions as quenachants. The severity of coolants investigated is
relatively lower compared to water – making quenching process
easier to control. The high sensitivity of the method enables a
study of the effect of various quenching parameters on heat trans-
fer. The impact of coolant utilization time and its temperature on
HTC have been examined.
The results of investigation have led to the following
conclusions:
364 A. Buczek, T. Telejko / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 44 (2013) 358–364
– While cooling in the mineral oils examined, an increase of
heat transfer coefficient was observed with an increase of
quenchant temperature, particularly near the peak of HTC
versus surface temperature curve. The peak is sharp and
occurs in a narrow temperature interval between 520 and
550 °C. An increase in temperature by 20 K caused HTC
increase by 8–17%, depending on the type of a mineral oil.
In the initial and final time intervals of cooling, the tempera-
ture of the fluid does not influence heat transfer at the solid-
liquid interface.
– Ageing of mineral oils affects their severities. Study of heat
transfer during cooling in oil A used for 2 years, in comparison
with unused, has shown an increase of the HTC peak value by
10%. The opposite relation has been found for oil B. The
2 year-utilization time lowered the HTC peak by 10%. The
direction of change is equivocal; explanation of this phenome-
non needs further detailed investigation.
– The shape of peak of HTC versus temperature relation deter-
mined for agitated quenching in a polymer solution is flat
and covers the 100 K interval. The peak occurs at a lower
temperature compared to mineral oils. Noticeable local dis-
turbances of the curve are observed in the initial time of
cooling.
Heat transfer from the cooled surface to the quenchant is lim-
ited by heat conduction in the sample. The transport of heat
from inside to the body’s surface is limited by its thermal
parameters including thermal conductivity, heat capacity and
density. In case of numerous materials this factor cannot be
omitted while investigating coolant characteristics. The use of
the same quenching curves for materials differing in thermo-
physical properties can lead to significant quality loses in the fi-
nal quenched product. This problem is a subject of research
currently carried out.
Acknowledgements
Scientific work financially supported by the Polish Ministry of
Science and Higher Education, Grant No. N N512 317438.
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