INFLUENCE OF SIO2 ON INTERFACIAL TENSION BETWEEN OXIDE SYSTEM AND STEEL

The presented paper is focused on the study of interfacial tension between selected oxide and metal phases. Interfacial phenomena play essential role in many metallurgical processes, in which two immiscible liquid phases co-exist. Experimental study of these phenomena is very difficult and this is the reason why there are not commonly accessible literary data to predict the interfacial effects in the interface oxide phase/metal. In this work the influence of SiO2 on temperature dependence of interfacial tension was researched. As a representative of the metal phase low alloyed steel was chosen. Because of wide variety of oxide systems used in the industry, characteristic system of casting powder was chosen for study. Except for dominant components, which mainly are SiO2, CaO, Al2O3 and MgO, these systems also contain a range of attendant mixtures, such as for example Fe2O3, TiO2 and Na2O. Further, for prediction of influence of attendant mixtures on interfacial tension the synthetic system with equivalent representation of dominant components was created. Experimental research of interfacial tension was performed in horizontal resistive graphite Tamman furnace using original method of measuring. This method consists in fixing both liquid phases in horizontal position using the mandrel made of tungsten wire in a corundum cover.