A 3D FEA Approach to Design an Induction Coil for Case Hardening of a Carbon Steel Gear

Abstract

It is already known that the external surface of the gear must be hardened to a certain depth to achieve better mechanical performance. This work deals with the determination of the suitable induction coil parameters leads to make it able to generate the required temperature distribution in the gear body during the induction hardening process within the required time. These parameters are; the geometry of the coil, its number of turns, and both the magnitude and the frequency of the current passing through the coil during the heating process. Also, the work deals with the determination of the required period of time elapsed during the quenching process to reach the required case hardening of the carbon steel CK-45 gear. For this purpose, the ferrite flux concentrator option is proposed and studied in this work. The effect of two kinds of ferrite materials has been analyzed in this paper. In this research, a 3D electromagnetic-thermal coupled Finite Element Method (FEM) analysis adopted using the ANSYS computer package. The proposed designs with and without the flux concentrators results are shown and a declaration of the differences between the two types of different aspects.