CFD-based Design Optimization of Air Quenching Equipment to Enhance the Cooling Effect

To improve the productivity and quality of industrial products, it is necessary to improve the cooling effect of the air quenching equipment. To optimize the design of the air quenching device, case studies involving numerical analyses using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique were performed. The reliability of the CFD model was validated by comparing the product temperature results obtained using the CFD model with the experimental results obtained using an actual commercial equipment to cool an aluminum alloy product weighing 36 kg. It was observed that the main variables influencing the cooling effect of the air quenching equipment included the distance between air inlet and the product, air velocity at the inlet, and inlet design. A smaller distance between the inlet and the product corresponded to a better cooling effect. The air velocity at the inlet was dependent on the inlet design and flow rate of the air, and the cooling effect varied with the inlet design. When the products at a temperature of 535 °C were cooled for 1200 s, the average temperatures of the cooled products were 190 °C and 117 °C in the cases involving air quenching equipment with a non-optimized and optimized inlet design, respectively. Thus, the optimization of the inlet design could lead to a higher cooling effect, with a temperature reduction of 73 °C. It is expected that the findings of this work can be used to design air quenching equipment with an excellent cooling effect.