Role of Water Temperature in a Spray Cooling of a Hot Steel Plate at Different Initial Temperatures

Abstract

Water Spray cooling is an important technology used in the steel industries for the cooling from a temperature of 900 o C .The final mechanical properties of the steel are directly proportional to the quenching rate. Spray cooling is an important technique to achieve very high cooling rate .However, the achieved cooling rate is not sufficient for the metal which are used in some specific applications such as steel used for the production of surgical tools, fabrication of the rail track for the high speed train and also for light weight aircraft. Hence ,this methodology needs to be tried enhanced .In the current work by decreasing sensible heating time which is achieved by increasing water temperature, water the spray cooling is fixed to enhance .In the current work spray cooling experiments were conducted at various water temperature on a square shape (100 × 100 × 6) AISI-304 steel plate at different initial temperatures. To understand the heat transfer mechanism with respect to water temperature, first spray characteristic were studied then the water properties at different temperatures were determined. The result shown that an increasing water temperature, the heat removal increase due to decrement of evaporation period. The average heat flux obtained in case of water temperature 50 o C is 1.4 times of average heat flux obtained at water temperature of 900 o C .The same trade line also has been observed for the 600 o C and 300 o C.