Quenching for the Future—In Memoriam of Sören Segerberg

Abstract

Sören Segerberg passed away on July 27, 2021 at the age of 78. Born in 1943 he graduated from Materials Science and Engineering at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1968 with a degree in metallurgical science. Sören Segerberg was a leading expert in the quenching area. From 1979 on and the next 25 years, he worked in research and development at the Institute for Engineering Technology Research (IVF, today RISE) in Gothenburg, Sweden. He was one of the initiators of the development and sale of IVF’s Quenchotest/ivf SmartQuench, an equipment for quality control of cooling curve measurement. He was also a contributor in the development of ASTM D6200 and ISO 9950.During his time at RISE, many projects in the field of quenching were carried out involving cooling characteristics of quenchants, classification of quench oils and polymers as well as correlation between quenching characteristics of quenching media and hardness. In the early 90s, one focus lay on environmental adapted quenchants and methods. The work included spray-quenching with e.g. water/air-mixtures, fluidized bed and, of course, cooling in gas. The latter was an extensive part of the work, also including an equipment with an atmospheric furnace connected to a cold high-pressure gas cooling chamber.Pressures up to 40 bar helium and up to 10 bar with nitrogen could be used. The aim was to study whether gas cooling could be used as an environmental adapted replacement for oil or salt cooling. Today the use of cooling in gas has substantially increased and has proven to be a sustainable alternative to liquid quenching, especially oils.