Immersion Quenching Simulation of Realistic Cylinder Head Geometry

In this paper, a recently improved Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methodology for virtual prototyping of the heat treatment of cast aluminum parts, above most of cylinder heads of internal combustion engines (ICE), is presented. The comparison between measurement data and numerical results has been carried out to simulate the real time immersion quenching cooling process of realistic cylinder head structure using the commercial CFD code AVL FIRE^®. The Eulerian multi-fluid modeling approach is used to handle the boiling flow and the heat transfer between the heated structure and the sub-cooled liquid. While for the fluid region governing equations are solved for each phase separately, only the energy equation is solved in the solid region. Heat transfer coefficients depend on the boiling regimes which are separated by the Leidenfrost temperature. The objective of the present research work is to present an update of the quenching model where instead of constant, variable Leidenfrost temperature is applied. Furthermore, simulation results are compared with available measurements results of different solid part orientations. The temperature histories predicted by the presented model correlate very well with the provided measurement data at different monitoring locations. In terms of methodology presented in previous publications both, measurement and simulation techniques have been further improved.