A comparative study on determination method of heat transfer coefficient using inverse heat transfer and iterative modification

The distortion control of heat-treated steel parts is a main consideration when dealing with hardening by quenching process. Before implementing this heat treating process, prediction of distortion is necessary to be done by experiment and computer simulation for determining a quenching technique which gives the smaller distortion. Temperature-dependent heat transfer coefficient (HTC) estimated from SUS304 cylinder can be determined by both iterative modification of lumped heat capacity method (LumpHC) and inverse heat transfer method (InvHT). Predicted HTC from silver probe is needed for the LumpHC, whereas initial set of assumption is needed for the InvHT. The zone-based HTC estimated from SUS304 cylinder then is employed on S45C cylinder. The prediction accuracy results from both methods are evaluated. As expected, stir quenching gives less distortion than that of still quenching. More accurate prediction of cooling curves, cooling rate curves, and distortion is achieved by employing the LumpHC than that by the InvHT. All analyses were performed by DEFORM-HT 2D.