Simulação de tratamentos térmicos empregando o método dos volumes finitos

Abstract

Heat treatments are very common practices and of great importance for the metalworking industry. It modify very significantly the mechanical properties of several commercial alloys, particularly steels, which occupy an outstanding position among all materials used today, through controlled heating and cooling. In recent years, the interest in developing numerical applications able to simulate the phenomena and transformations that occur during these treatments has been growing, so that they can predict the microstructural changes and the resulting mechanical properties of the treated material. The objective of this paper is to develop a computer program that simulates the step of cooling the heat treatment of steels for mechanical construction. This program calculates the temperature field inside prismatic blocks, solving the equation of heat conduction through the Finite Volume Method. From the cooling curve of any point inside the block and curves CRT (Continuous Cooling Transformation) of steel, one can determine the microstructure formed. The results of the simulation were validated by comparison with analytical solutions and with an experiment in which a test specimen of ABNT 1030 steel was normalized and subsequently subjected to metallographic analysis