Quenching of aerospace forgings from high temperatures using air-assisted, atomized water sprays

The nickel-based superalloy or titanium materials used in the aerospace industry are cooled from high temperatures during the heat treatment process to obtain appropriate strength properties. However, unacceptably high residual stresses can be developed in some situations if the rate of cooling is too high so that air-assisted, atomized water sprays have been suggested as an alternative to the widely used techniques of quenching in oil or water. Thus, this article examines two aspects of the use of air-water sprays for quenching aeroengine forgings. First, basic experimental heat transfer data are presented for a wide range of water flows and for surface temperatures up to approximately 850 °C, for both plane and recessed surfaces. Second, the heat transfer data are used in numerical simulations to study the influence of nonuniform spray distributions on the residual stress patterns in a typical forging.