Simulation of Heat Treatment Distortion

This paper gives an overview of the problem of heat treatment stress and distortion and a review of literature surrounding it. Software developed to predict heat treat distortion is also reviewed. Simulations are presented for a quenched cylinder to demonstrate the capabilities of software available for predicting heat treatment stress and distortion. The software package DANTE was identified as one of the most advanced tools for solving heat treat distortion problems. Example calculations using DANTE show it to have very advanced features, and its predictions were shown to agree in a relative sense (within about 15%) with measurements reported in the literature of heat treatment distortion on Navy-C rings made from 4140 and 8620 steel quenched in water and in oil. Unfortunately, due to the lack of documentation on the heat treatment process details more quantitative comparison could not be made. As part of future work, the authors are developing a test piece casting to be produced at a participating foundry to provide data on heat treatment distortions. The test casting is being designed through simulation and through consideration of past experiments reported in the literature. Experimental measurement of temperatures and distortions during heat treatment, and (possibly) residual stresses, will be made in the future as part of both experiments on test piece castings, and on production case study castings, to validate and improve the software predictions.