Numerical Simulation of the Temperature Field and Stress Evolution Behavior of a Hot-Rolled Seamless Steel Tube Under Temperature-Controlled Quenching

The production process of hot-rolled seamless steel tubes often needs secondary heating for tempering treatment, resulting in high energy consumption and low production efficiency. Controlled cooling technology has been introduced into the production process. By controlling the self-tempering temperature, the residual temperature of the steel tubes is used to realize self-tempering, so as to achieve the purposes of energy savings, emissions reduction, cost reduction, and efficiency increase. This study investigated the evolution of temperature and stress fields in a seamless steel tube during temperature-controlled quenching. The size of the steel tube is 140 mm × 20 mm × 200 mm. The outer-wall cooling intensity and the self-tempering temperature were selected as the main variables, and the other process parameters remained constant. The temperature distribution and stress variation curves under different cooling intensities were obtained. The results showed that the greater the cooling intensity of the outer wall, the higher the temperature recovery of the outer wall. Under the fixed cooling intensity, the lower the self-tempering temperature, the lower the return temperature. In the thickness direction of the steel tube, there is a stress distribution of “internal tension and external compression”. Moreover, the greater the cooling intensity, the lower the self-tempering temperature and the greater the residual stress.