Effects of Heat Transfer Coefficients on Quenching Residual Stresses in 7055 Aluminum Alloy

The quenching process can produce great residual stresses in 7055 aluminum alloy plates. The main factor that affects the quenching residual stresses is the heat transfer coefficient in the quenching process. In this paper, the heat transfer coefficients of spray quenching under different spray water flows were measured by using the inverse method, and the heat transfer coefficients of immersion quenching under different water temperatures were measured by the iterative method. The heat transfer coefficient increases as the spray water flow increases while decreases as the water temperature increases. The basic differences of water temperatures/spray water flows/quenching methods are the different heat transfer coefficients. According to the heat transfer coefficients results of immersion and spray quenching, an orthogonal test was carried out to study the effects of heat transfer coefficients in different temperature regions on the quenching residual stresses. The heat transfer coefficients in the range of 100oC ~200oC have a great influence on the quenching residual stresses, especially for the heat transfer coefficient near 150oC.