Capillary interaction between inclusion particles on the 16Cr stainless steel melt surface
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I. INTRODUCTION
CAPILLARY interaction between solid particles partly immersed in the gas-liquid interface has been extensively studied. It has been known that such interaction is attractive and results in the quick agglomeration of particles and in the formation of clusters. In mineral dressing processes, this interaction is utilized for the extraction and separation of ore particles in aqueous systems. In metal production processes, capillary interaction is considered both to play an important role in accelerating the removal of inclusions and to modify the inclusion morphology. However, in molten metal systems, this interaction is not yet well understood, owing to the experimental difficulties at high temperatures. On the other hand, a series of theoretical studies on this interaction mechanism was carried out recently by Kralchevsky and coworkers,[1–4] who made it possible to estimate the capillary interaction force between spherical particles. Reference 4, in particular, is a short review of their previous two articles. It shows the difference in the capillary forces in both a case of floating particles[3] and a case of partially immersed particles on a substrate.[2] Yin and co-workers[5,6,7] and Kimura et al.[8,9] have implemented a confocal scanning laser microscope (CSLM) combined with an infrared image furnace to carry out in situ realtime observations of inclusion particle behavior at the inert gas-steel melt interface. It was practically confirmed in their observations that strong agglomeration due to capillary interaction occurred, especially between alumina inclusion particles. However, the quantitative elucidation of interactions between various particles, sometimes attractive, sometimes repulsive, has not yet been sufficiently obtained in terms of the phase, the shape, and the physical properties of the particles.
KEIJI NAKAJIMA, Associate Professor, and SHOZO MIZOGUCHI, Professor, are with the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, Tohoku University, Sendai, 980-8577, Japan. Manuscript submitted August 16, 2000. METALLURGICAL AND MATERIALS TRANSACTIONS B
In the present work, both in situ observational and theoretical analyses were carried out for 16Cr stainless steels of the commercial grade by paying special attention to the phase classification of inclusions and to the differences in interaction due to the type of phase (solid, liquid or complex). This kind of steel is particularly interesting because various types of inclusions are seen, depending on the deoxidation practice. The attractive or repulsive behavior between various particles is elucidated quantitatively on the basis of an energetic approach to the capillary interaction theory. The effects of interfacial tension, particle size, density, and contact angle on the capillary interaction are investigated. II. EXPERIMENT A. Experimental Method The CSLM combined with an infrared image furnace, the same one as that referred to in the previous article,[8] was used to carry out the in situ observations of inclusion pa
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