Simulation of quenching process of steels creating complex carbides

The scientific research, presented in this paper, deals with numerical modelling of the quenching process of conventional carbon steels. The developed numerical model simulates the quenching process of the hypereutectoid steels whose microstructure contains complex carbides. Those include the high-alloyed hyper-eutectoid steels intended for example for bearings, or high speed steel products. The calculation software SYSWELD, based on the finite element method, was used. The results of numerical modelling were compared with actual properties of quenched samples made of the hyper-eutectoid bearing steel. The microstructure was studied and hardness was measured in order to verify the numerical model's accuracy. The presented results indicate the absence of carbidic phase in the simulation calculations. This implies relatively large deviations in the simulated hardness results compared toh reality. Those deviations must be considered in the case of simulating the microstructure and hardness of bearing steels using the SYSWELD software.