Numerical Simulation of Water Quenching Process of an Engine Cylinder Head

Abstract

Presented is a simulation of an engine cylinder head undergoing water quenching process using a recently developed approach for modeling quenching cooling of metal parts (Wang et al., 2002). The approach is based on the AVL SWIFT Eulerian two-fluid method with special emphasis on handling high mass exchange rate associated with quenching. A tetrahedral grid of 830,000 cells is generated for the computational domain, which includes the solid part of the cylinder head immersed in the fluid. Detailed vapor and temperature distributions are obtained which offer valuable information for the thermal stress analysis. It is observed that the temperature field within the cylinder head is highly non-uniform. The computed cylinder head monitoring point temperature versus time is compared with that registered by the thermal couple measurement. Reasonable agreement is observed. The simulation exercise may potentially be used to identify the cause of cracks often encountered in quenching heat treatment thereby lead to a better design of the process.

Numerical simulation of immersion quenching process of an engine cylinder head

“…The numerical solution procedure is based on SIMPLE algorithm which is extended to multiphase flow case in the fluid domain. More detailed discussion on the subject can be obtained from Wang et al [20,21]. The implicit interphase drag coupling between the multi-fluid phases existing in the fluid zone is achieved by Partial Elimination Algorithm.…”

“…According to the knowledge of the authors, no literature is available on the existence of mass transfer models covering all the different modes of boiling viz., nucleate, transition and film boiling. Although, earlier work by Wang et al [20,21] presented a brief description of mass transfer effects arising from the film boiling mode, no elaborate derivation for the transition modes, which is of critical importance during the quenching process, was made available. In this concern, the boiling model constructed in this study accounts for detailed effects of heat transfer mechanisms encountered in a typical boiling heat transfer study inclusive of oscillatory wetting front mechanism during transition boiling, critical and minimum heat flux approximations, effect of subcooling to cite a few.…”

“…In their recent work, Wang et al [20,21] performed computations involving a coupled multi-fluid/solid approach using the commercial CFD code AVL-FIRE [22]. In their simulations, two momentum equations were solved for vapor and liquid phases, a mixture energy equation for vapor and liquid phases is formulated and solved simultaneously with conduction equation in the solid part (conjugate heat transfer approach (CHT)).…”

Numerical Investigations of Quenching Cooling Processes for Different Cast Aluminum Parts

“…Based on the complexities and phenomena of multi-phase flows during immersion quenching applications, heat and mass transfer empirical models were proposed and developed. One of them is the model for mass transfer prediction, as proposed by Wang et al [6], who assumed that the mass transfer rate due to boiling was proportional to the heat transfer rate in the fluid system. This model was later improved by Srinivasan et al [7], and it has already been implemented within the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code AVL FIRE ® where it is applied for the numerical simulations of quenching processes [8].…”

“…Published works like Wang et al [6], Srinivasan et al [7] and Greif et al [8], consider two separate domains, water and solid, which require separate simulations for each of them. The two simulations can be numerically coupled at the contact interface and communicate via the so-called ACCI (AVL code coupling interface) method after each time-step.…”