POSSIBILITIES OF EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF OXIDIC MELTS VISCOSITY

The paper is focused on experimental study of viscosity of melted inorganic systems based on oxides, which form the basis of metallurgical slags and casting powders. Viscous behavior of slags is important factor, which influences processes during refining metallurgical processes and processes taking place in the mould of continuous casting machines (CCM). Emphasis was put on the theoretical analysis of structural regularities of slag melts and finding connections between their microstructure, which depends on temperature, chemical composition and viscosity. For experiments high-temperature viscometer Anton Paar was used. This device is primarily intended for research of oxidic melts viscosity at temperatures of 1600 degrees C in a rotary and vibratory mode with the declared precision of 0.5%. To verify the functionality of this device the test was carried out for standard glass at the temperature of 1200 degrees C. The following experiments were conducted with oxidic materials consisting mainly of CaO-Al2O3-SiO2. The influence of temperature and chemical composition on viscosity of researched melts was investigated. Tests to obtain optimum setting of torque were carried out using flow curves before each experiment.