Abstract
The present study was motivated by increasing demands on quantitative measurements of the heat flux through the water cooling and quenching process of hot steel. The local heat flux measurements are employed by a novel experimental technique that has a function of high-temperature heat flux gauge in which test block assemblies are directly used to measure the heat flux variation during water cooling and quenching of hot steel. The heat flux can be directly achieved by Fourier's law and is also compared with numerical estimation which is solved by inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP). The high-temperature heat flux gauge developed in this study can be applicable to measure cooling rate and history during the actual cooling applications of steelmaking process. In addition, the measurement uncertainty of heat flux is calculated by a quantitative uncertainty analysis which is based on the ANSI/ASME PTC 19.1-2005 standard.