Motivation for the development of new thermal rate sensors for material science applications

The heat treatment community is interested in quantifying the quenching process in order to: develop high-quality heat treated products; evaluate new quenchants and quenchant systems; evaluate quenchant quality/degradation over usage time. Developing accurate quenching models requires an extensive experimental database that includes the characterisation of the distributed and transient surface heat flux. The surface heat flux or heat transfer coefficient are rarely measured, calculated or modelled in sufficient detail for addressing the above three critical issues. Frankel and his coworkers are developing a new family of transient thermal-rate sensors that will improve both diagnostic and real-time analyses in heat transfer studies. Analyses have been performed indicating that there exists a novel, thermal-rate sensor hierarchy that stabilises predictions when used with analysis. This concept can be used for investigating both direct surface heat transfer effects and projective surface analysis based on embedded sensors.