On a FEM platform for simulation of quenching/heat treating operations

Quenching and heat treating operations, in concert with the requirement for distortion control, involve strongly coupled fluid-thermal-structural interaction processes. The design of these operations has largely been based on practice and experience, iterating to a process that yields satisfactory results. The recent emergence of powerful workstations and PCs has prompted creation of computer software systems that support execution of math-physics model descriptions simulating such processes to support cause/effect analyses and system design optimization. This paper highlights and exemplifies such an applied computational simulation (ACS) system based on finite element methodology (FEM) for the broad problem description.