Numerical simulation of induction hardening of steel

Abstract

We discuss a model that is capable of describing the process of induction hardening of steel: induction heating – heat transfer – solid‐solid phase transitions in steel. It consists of a reduced system of Maxwell’s equations, the heat transfer eqaution and a system of ordinary differential equations for the volume fractions of the occuring phases. The model is applied to simulate surface heat treatments, which play an important role in the manufacturing of steel. The numerical methods are implemented with tools from pdelib, a collection of modular algorithms. We present numerical simulations of surface hardening applied to the steel 42 CrMo 4.