Residual Stress Distribution after Quenching Treatment Obtained from Diffraction Experiments and Simulation by Finite Element Method

A model found by finite element method was developed in COMSOL Multiphysics to describe the evolution of residual stress after quenching of cylindrical samples of aluminium alloys AA2014 and AA5083. The treatment consisted of annealing followed by quenching in fresh water. The thermal and mechanical properties of both alloys at the annealing and room temperatures were taken into account. A different sample size was considered for each alloy. The simulations show that the residual stress strongly depends on the yield stress and sample size. The results obtained by the finite element method were compared with the experimental residual stress profiles calculated from neutron and X-ray diffraction data.