In quenching process of steel, the accurate determination of cooling curve at the positions in a quenched part is very important. Since the cooling rate will be calculated and the microstructure at the different quenched zones of the part will be determined base on the cooling curve. The difficulty in the determination immediately temperature in the quenched part and the high cost of repeating experiments to obtain the accurate results are the main disadvantages of the experimental method. In addition, the experimental method only can be used to determine the cooling rate at certain points on the surface of the quenched part. This paper presents the method to determine the whole distribution of the temperature field and the cooling rate at every point in the quenched C-ring model specimen by using a numerical simulation technique. The similarity in the experimental and the simulation results prove that the numerical simulation technique can be reliably used as a virtual experiment method to predict the results of the practical quenching process and to optimize the quenching technical parameters.
