Quenching (disambiguation)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- In materials science, quenching is the rapid cooling of a solid to lock it into a metastable crystal structure rather than allow it to cool slowly and revert to a softer structure. It is most commonly used to harden steel by introducing martensite, in which case the steel must be cooled from a temperature at which austenite is stable.
- Quenching is a general term for non-radiative de-excitation. One major reason for non-radiative de-excitation is collisions. As a consequence, quenching is often heavily dependent on pressure and temperature. Quenching poses a problem for non-instant spectroscopic methods, such as laser-induced fluorescence.
- Quenching is a term used also in internal combustion chamber, when the rapid cooling of fuel inside the combustion chamber prevents the fuel from burning. This situation is commonly observed in diesel (compression ignition) engines which run on natural gas, when running at lower speed. It dramatically reduces the efficiency and increases knocking and might cause engine to stall.
- Quench is an album by The Beautiful South.
