Victor Guiller, R&D Engineer Quenching, Forming and Hydraulic, Fuchs Lubrifiant France S.A.

Quenching is a very common method in the heat treatment of materials. In this process, a heated workpiece is rapidly cooled within a fluid to obtain certain material properties, i.e. specific hardness of metals.
In the production of quenching oils, a time-consuming performance test evaluating the cooling speed and characteristics of the fluid is used to assess if the product meets the specifications. The evaluation and comparison of performances is realized through the analysis of six parameters obtained from the cooling curves.

The study’s objectives are to create a mathematical model of the cooling curves with the Functional Data Explorer on JMP® Pro, predicting conformity or non-conformity of the production batches, and being able to classify the different products.

The targeted additivation of these fluids has a major impact on their performance, such as the cooling rate. As a result of this study, the creation of the mathematical model leads to a correct product and conformity status identification, and the prediction model enables to plan correction of non-conform batch with the optimal amount of additive. The developed models make a significant contribution to making the fluid development more efficient.