In order to obtain satisfactory mechanical properties for the cam used in high-power ship diesel engines, a new quenching technology was proposed by designing a two-stage quenching process with an alkaline bath as the quenching medium. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed new quenching technology, both numerical analysis and experimental study were performed. The new quenching technology was analyzed using finite element method. The combined effects of the temperature, stress and microstructure fields were investigated considering nonlinear material properties. Finally, an experimental study was performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed new quenching technology. The numerical results show that internal stress is affected by both thermal stress and transformation stress. In addition, the direction of the internal stress is changed several times due to thermal interaction and microstructure evolution during the quenching process. The experimental results show that the proposed new quenching technology significantly improves the mechanical properties and microstructures of the cam. The tensile strength, the impact resistance and the hardness value of the cam by the proposed new quenching technology are improved by 4.3%, 8.9% and 3.5% compared with those by the traditional quenching technology. Moreover, the residual stress and cam shape deformation are reduced by 40.0% and 48.9% respectively for the cam manufactured by the new quenching technology.
