This article explains cooling mechanisms involving saltwater solutions used as quenchants. The analyses of cooling power include studies of cooling curves, heat-transfer coefficients, and cooling rates. The influence of other bath parameters, such as temperature and agitation, is also discussed. The article discusses solute additions and several factors impacting quenching.

In this article, an in-depth overview of petroleum quenching oils is provided, including oil composition, use, mechanism of the oil quenching processes, oil degradation, toxicology and safety, and quenching bath maintenance.

This article focuses on the quenching properties of vegetable and animal oils, including toxicity and biodegradability of vegetable/animal oils. The article provides a detailed discussion on the oxidation of vegetable/animal oils. The addition of antioxidants to stabilize soybean and palm oils is discussed, and the article concludes that substantially better performance is required if vegetable oils are to be effective functional equivalents to petroleum oil formulations. This may be done by selecting different vegetable oil compositions with less unsaturation, by applying genetic modification of soybean seed oils, or by chemically modifying and stabilizing the vegetable oil structure.

This article presents the fundamentals of induction hardening (IH). It focuses on liquid quenching technology, but some specifics and brief comments are provided regarding alternative quenching media as well. The article provides a discussion on the following quench modes that can be applied in IH using liquid media: conventional immersion quenching, open spray quenching, flood quenching, and submerged quench or submerged spray quench. It also focuses on four primary methods of IH: scan hardening, progressive hardening, single-shot hardening, and static hardening.

Quenching refers to the rapid cooling of metal from the solution treating temperature, typically between 465 and 565 deg C (870 and 1050 deg F) for aluminum alloys. This article provides an overview on the appropriate quenching process and factors used to determine suitable cooling rate. It describes the quench sensitivity and severity of alloys, quench mechanisms and the different types of quenchants used in immersion, spray, and fog quenching. The article provides a detailed description of the quench-factor analysis that mainly includes residual stress and distortion, which can be controlled by proper racking. It concludes with information on agitation and the quench tank system used in the quenching of aluminum alloys.

Induction heating for hardening of steels has advantages from the standpoint of quenching because parts are individually processed in a controlled manner. This article provides information on the effect of agitation, temperature, hardening, residual stresses, and quenching media, on quenching. It also describes various quenching methods for steel induction heat treating, namely, spray quenching, immersion quenching, self or mass quenching, and forced air quenching. The article also reviews quench system design and quenchants and their maintenance.

This article describes the mechanisms and characteristics of heat transfer in the quenching of steel. This article describes the characterization of boiling heat transfer, including pool boiling, forced convective boiling, and rewetting, which plays a key role in defining the heat-extraction characteristics of a liquid quenchant. It provides information on heat generated microstructural field evolution and information on the analysis and characterization of heat transfer boundary conditions.

This article provides a discussion on probes for laboratory tests and resultant curves of industrial quenching processes. It describes the scope of the tests, and the calculation of heat-transfer coefficient (HTC) based on the tests. The article highlights the differences between the laboratory tests and characterization of industrial quenching processes. It reviews the importance of initial heat-flux density and first critical heat-flux density. The theoretical principle behind and the purpose of the temperature gradient method are discussed. The article provides information on the design of the probe, heat-extraction dynamics, and influence of wetting kinematics. It also includes discussions on the simplified 1-D temperature-distribution model, calculation of the HTC, and the finite-volume method for the heat-conduction equation.

Spray quenching refers to a wide variety of quenching processes that involve heat removal facilitated by the impingement of a quenchant medium on a hot metal surface. This article provides information on the basic concepts of spray quenching, and discusses the most commonly used techniques in quench tank agitation to establish uniformity of the quenched part. Common techniques include quenchant stirring, quenchant circulation, and submerged jet/spray mixing. The article also describes the effect of quenching agitation and reviews heat-transfer characteristics of immersion quenching and spray quenching with water.