Mixed-convective, conjugate heat transfer during molten salt quenching of small parts

It is common in free quenching immersion heat treatment calculations to locally apply constant or surface-averaged heat-transfer coefficients obtained from either free or forced steady convection over simple shapes with small temperature differences from the ambient fluid. This procedure avoids the solution of highly transient, non-Boussinesq conjugate heat transfer problems which often involve mixed convection, but it leaves great uncertainty about the general adequacy of the results. In this paper we demonstrate for small parts (dimensions of the order of inches rather than feet) quenched in molten salt, that it is feasible to calculate such nonuniform surface heat transfer from first principles without adjustable empirical parameters. We use literature physical property salt data from the separate publications of Kirst et al., Nissen, Carling, and Teja, et al. for T<1000 F, and then extrapolate it to the initial part temperature. The reported thermal/chemical breakdown of NaNO{sub 2} for T>800 F is not considered to be important due to the short time the surface temperature exceeds that value for small parts. Similarly, for small parts, the local Reynolds and Rayleigh numbers are below the corresponding critical values for most if not all of the quench, so that we see no evidence of the existence of significant turbulence effects, only some large scale unsteadiness for brief periods. The experimental data comparisons from the open literature include some probe cooling-rate results of Foreman, as well as some cylinder thermal histories of Howes