Simulation to Analyze Two Models of Agitation System in Quench Process

In this work, two models of agitation for an industrial quench system carried out in a rectangular in shape tank were simulated. To analyze the system behavior it was considered a submerged agitation system in bottom of the tank and the other adding a lateral arrangement in an attempt to standardize the agitation in the quench zone. In this simulation process the cooling profile and heat transfer coefficient were evaluated through a calculation procedure implemented in the ANSYS CFX ® software and they were analyzed to understand how far from the uniformity the cooling is. The results shown that the cooling of material was not uniform for the case one (agitation in the bottom of the tank) , because the temperature profile of one side was very different from the others, showing that in this case it is possible to occur different formation of microstructures in the same material. For the case were a lateral arrangement is used a better uniformity was achieved. The cooling uniformity is necessary to avoid the formation of different microstructures such as foreseen in case one. The analysis provides information of how CFD can improve control of quench process by studies of optimal quench uniformity.