Industrial-level water quenching operations generally lead to high residual stresses and distortion, especially for large steel parts, due to the high temperature gradient present. In this work, a 3D Finite Element (FE) model was used to simulate the water quenching process of a large size forged block made of high-strength steel in a bid to predict the induced distortion and residual stresses. The FE model considers the coupling between the thermal, mechanical and metallurgical fields and in addition to that the mechanical properties related to each phase at different temperatures were experimentally generated to feed the FE model with reliable material data. Furthermore, an experimental approach was designed to accurately measure the shape change after quenching. The results indicated that the FE model was able to predict the pattern of the distortion induced by the quench process. Also, the value of the maximum magnitude of thickness reduction was predicted at the center region of the block with a deviation of 0.5 mm.

由于存在高温梯度，工业级水淬火操作通常会导致较高的残余应力和变形，特别是对于大型钢部件而言。在这项工作中，使用3D有限元（FE）模型来模拟由高强度钢制成的大型锻造块的水淬过程，以预测引起的变形和残余应力。FE模型考虑了热场，机械场和冶金场之间的耦合，此外还通过实验生成了与不同温度下各相有关的机械性能，以为FE模型提供可靠的材料数据。此外，设计了一种实验方法来精确测量淬火后的形状变化。结果表明，有限元模型能够预测淬火过程引起的变形模式。另外，在块的中心区域预测厚度减小的最大幅度的值为0.5mm。