Numerical Analysis of Heat Conduction in Cooling of Aluminum Extrusion
A thermal analysis of the cooling of an extruded aluminum alloy by means of water sprays is carried out. The heat conduction problem has been solved numerically by means of a finite volume method. The heat transfer coefficients used in the boundary conditions has been evaluated by means of spray heat transfer correlations, which relate these coefficients to the spray hydrodynamic parameters. The influence of the number of sprays and of the solid velocity has been investigated. Results show that the efficiency of the cooling system decreases as the number of jets increases. The efficiency of each spray increases with the velocity for the same number of sprays. As the workpiece velocity increases it needs to increase the number of sprays to obtain the same temperature difference between the entry and the exit of the cooling system. The greater the number of sprays related to the case with lower velocity, the smaller the increase of the number of sprays.