Cooling → phase fractions
16MND5 thermal–metallurgical reference. 56 recorded assertions passed. No displacement or stress solution.
FREE EXAMPLE / THE KATANA QUENCH
One blade.
Three systems.
Heat escapes. Crystals transform.
The connected blade changes shape.
A new recorded-field film, alongside a qualitative explanation of Inoue’s reported sequence. Preliminary research; physical validation remains open.
Follow the whole interaction ↓NEW / 20-SECOND RECORDED-FIELD FILM
Watch the curve
take shape.
Heat leaves the steel. Phases transform. The blade bends. A steady side view follows preliminary recorded temperature, phase, strain and stress fields.
Deformation is magnified ×5. The rising water plume is illustrative; the separate CFD overlay is an independent single-phase reference. Coarse research preview; not physically validated.
Soundtrack: “Transformation” — 160 BPM. AI-generated shamisen / metal instrumental, created with Google Flow Music.
Display controls only. Overlaid colours blend; isolate a layer to read its colour key. Layer separation is a viewing aid.
02 / 04
SYNCHRONIZED STORYNormal bending · schematicDrag to orbit · scroll to zoom
Preparing katana concept graphics…
01
Heat exchange
Illustrative surface heat-loss arrowsCooler region Hotter region
02
Metallurgical change
Illustrated transformation regionsAusteniteMartensitePearlite
03
Deformation + mesh
Artistic shape change · display meshContraction tendency Expansion tendency
Anatomy follows the terminology of the historical study.
Qualitative illustration: colour regions, arrows, mesh and exaggerated curvature are artistic. No blade temperature, phase fractions or stress values are calculated. Heat-loss arrows are not a CFD solution.
Sequence interpreted from Inoue (1997), pp. 201–202, Figs. 18–20 ↗. Stage spacing and motion are artistic; they do not represent elapsed seconds or calculated displacement.
THE KATANA / 20-SECOND CONCEPT FILM
The whole interaction.
One synchronized view.
Heat, transformation regions and deformation follow the same illustrated history. Original explanatory graphics; no computed blade fields or CFD.
THE CONTINUUM PICTURE
Free to change.
Required to fit.
Each region has a preferred strain. The solid has to satisfy compatibility and mechanical equilibrium.
01εth
Thermal strain
Dimensions change with temperature and with the expansion behaviour of each phase.
02εtr
Transformation strain
A change in phase changes the stress-free dimensions. This contribution is distinct from cooling.
03εp + εtp
Plastic & transformation-plastic strain
Ordinary plastic flow and transformation plasticity record different parts of the inelastic history.
04εe
Elastic strain
Compatibility leaves elastic strain and stress. After cooling and unloading, residual stress can remain.
ε = εth + εtr + εp + εtp + εeConceptual small-strain decomposition; no values are calculated for the historical mesh.
WHY THE BOUNDARY MATTERS
Clay changes the cooling interaction.
Calling the coating “insulation” misses part of the evidence. The historical silver-probe experiments found that thin clay could increase heat transfer over an important high-temperature interval. Those probes were chosen to avoid steel phase transformations.
Film boiling, transition boiling and nucleate boiling can change the surface response. An applicable measured or reviewed boundary law needs the bath, surface, geometry and cooling branch. An effective coated-surface coefficient already includes the coating’s effect.
SEPARATE / COMPUTED REFERENCE APPENDIX
Where the numbers
are actually computed.
Two preserved Code_Aster 18.1.11 runs check different parts of the physics. Explore their real temperature, phase and mechanical fields on their own cylinder geometries.
Open computed reference viewer ↗Temperature + phases → mechanics
A separate constitutive reference under prescribed cooling and tensile loading. 60 recorded assertions passed.
116 recorded assertions concern these two numerical references. They do not validate a combined process model or the historical illustration. Retained MTLP mesh-marker alarms are documented in the evidence.
Sources, evidence and limits +
This original illustration is a qualitative reading of one historical study. It does not reproduce its HEARTS solution or transfer cylinder fields to blade geometry. Published colour maps do not uniquely recover raw three-dimensional fields.
- Main reading: Inoue (2002), Science of Tatara and Japanese Sword — English overview (a later follow-up, not the 1997 paper).
- Formal reference: Tatsuo Inoue (1997), The Japanese Sword: The Material, Manufacturing and Computer Simulation of Quenching Process, Materials Science Research International 3(4), 193–203. DOI ↗ · English publisher page ↗
- Uehara & Inoue (1995) — coating and heat-transfer experiments
- Yoshii, Iyota & Arimoto (2024) — strain-based explanation in a separate study
- EDF Code_Aster — steel modelling workflow
Inoue’s residual-stress comparison distinguishes measurement paths along hasaki, shinogi and mune, and longitudinal versus vertical directions. A signed component cannot be replaced by von Mises stress. No new digitized comparison curve is claimed here.
No publisher figures, PDF files, extracted article text, proprietary code or model files are included. Three.js renders the original scene. Software notices.
This free example includes a preliminary recorded blade film, an original schematic and separate computed cylinder references. Physical validation remains open. Browse the existing public reference data.