Development and Validation of a Thermo-Mechanical Finite Element Model of the Steel Quenching Process Including Solid-Solid Phase Changes

A computational thermo-metallographic and thermoelastoplastic model for the analysis of the quenching process is developed and validated. The diffusive transfor-mations are modeled according to the Johnson-Mehl-Avrami-Kolmogorov model and the Scheil's additivity rule. Two different models are investigated for the non-diffusive transformation-the Koistinen-Marburger model and the Yu model. A large displacement formulation is assumed for the deformation analysis, modeling the plastic behavior of the material according to the Prandtl-Reuss model. Two different bilinear hardening models-the isotropic and the kinematic hardening model-are used and compared. The model allows to evaluate the transient stress and strain distributions during the quenching process, the final phases and hardness distributions, and to predict the residual stress and the final deformation of the processed part. A good agreement between computational results and reference data is found.