As a rule, induction surface hardening is carried out industrially by employing polymer solutions since these ensure a more homogeneous quench than immersion cooling in water. Besides reproducing the quenching process, the intention here is to minimise the hardening defects and the distortions arising from the heat treatment. Polymer solutions also have a few disadvantages which include, among others, poor environmental compatibility and handleability. Quenching by means of spray cooling provides an effective alternative. The purpose of the current investigation is to substitute the polymer solution by a water‐air spray in induction hardening equipment for surface hardening spur gearwheels made of 42CrMo4 hardening and tempering steel. The suitability of spray cooling was assessed by means of hardness measurements, residual stress conditions, distortion measurements and by metallographic examinations. Based on the analyses currently carried out, it was possible to show that the two‐phase spray cooling represents an alternative quenching method which produces comparable component properties.
To optically capture the topography of a hot measurement object with high precision, the light deflection by the inhomogeneous refractive index field-induced by the heat transfer from the measurement object to the ambient medium-has to be considered. We used the 2D background oriented schlieren method with illuminated wavelet background, an optical flow algorithm, and Ciddor's equation to quantify the refractive index field located directly above a red-glowing, hot measurement object. A heat transfer simulation has been implemented to verify the magnitude and the shape of the measured refractive index field. Provided that no forced external flow is disturbing the shape of the convective flow originating from the hot object, a laminar flow can be observed directly above the object, resulting in a sharply bounded, inhomogeneous refractive index field.
Optical three-dimensional (3-D) geometry measurements are state of the art when it comes to contactless quality control and maintenance of the shape of technical components that exclude tactile measurements due to filigree or internal structures. Optical inspection methods are also characterized by a fast and high-resolution 3-D inspection of complex geometries. And due to their noncontact principle, they can carry out measurements in places that would otherwise not be accessible due to harsh environmental conditions or specimens such as hot forged parts. However, there are currently no methods to estimate the reconstruction quality for the optical 3-D geometry measurements of hot objects. The mainly used geometric measurement standards cannot be used for the characterization of hot measurements since the calibrated geometrical values are not transferable to high temperatures. For the development of such a metric, we present the fundamentals of the concepts and algorithms for an estimation of the reconstruction quality are presented and evaluated using a two-dimensional simulation model. The generated findings were applied to the 3-D geometry measurement of a hot object in a laboratory environment. The results are compared with general state-of-the-art reconstruction quality metrics. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
The optical inspection of wrought hot workpieces between subsequent forming steps of a multistage process chain can yield diverse advantages. Deficient components can be detected in an early forming stage. Moreover, the eliminated cooling economizes heating energy. The present workpiece temperature can be exploited in the following chain steps. Challenges arise due to the heat input into the air surrounding the workpiece, as triangulation techniques rely on homogeneous optical conditions. The effect of an inhomogeneous refractive index field (RIF) in air on a 3-D geometry measurement by optical triangulation is modeled exemplary by a virtual measurement of a hot cylinder. To our knowledge, this is the first simulation approach that fully considers both light deflection from the illumination unit to object and from object to camera. Simulated measurement results in a homogeneous and an inhomogeneous RIF are compared. The presented approach predicts measurement deviations in inhomogeneous optical media and can help to design actuated or computer-assisted compensation routines in order to reduce deflection effects when measuring hot objects.
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