Viscosity and diffusivity in melts: from unary to multicomponent systems

Abstract

Viscosity and diffusivity, two important transport coefficients, are systematically investigated from unary melt to binary to multicomponent melts in the present work. By coupling with Kaptay’s viscosity equation of pure liquid metals and effective radii of diffusion species, the Sutherland equation is modified by taking the size effect into account, and further derived into an Arrhenius formula for the convenient usage. Its reliability for predicting self-diffusivity and impurity diffusivity in unary liquids is then validated by comparing the calculated self-diffusivities and impurity diffusivities in liquid Al- and Fe-based alloys with the experimental and the assessed data. Moreover, the Kozlov model was chosen among various viscosity models as the most reliable one to reproduce the experimental viscosities in binary and multicomponent melts. Based on the reliable viscosities calculated from the Kozlov model, the modified Sutherland equation is utilized to predict the tracer diffusivities in binary and multicomponent melts, and validated in Al–Cu, Al–Ni and Al–Ce–Ni melts. Comprehensive comparisons between the calculated results and the literature data indicate that the experimental tracer diffusivities and the theoretical ones can be well reproduced by the present calculations. In addition, the vacancy-wind factor in binary liquid Al–Ni alloys with the increasing temperature is also discussed. What’s more, the calculated inter-diffusivities in liquid Al–Cu, Al–Ni and Al–Ag–Cu alloys are also in excellent agreement with the measured and theoretical data. Comparisons between the simulated concentration profiles and the measured ones in Al–Cu, Al–Ce–Ni and Al–Ag–Cu melts are further used to validate the present calculation method.

Keywords:

• transport properties
• diffusion
• liquids
• Sutherland equation

Funding

The financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation for Youth of China [grant number 51301208], Sino-German Center for Promotion of Science [grant number GZ 755], National Basic Research Program of China [grant number 2011CB610401] and the Zhuzhou Cemented Carbide Cutting Tools Co. Ltd. of China is acknowledged. Lijun Zhang acknowledges support from Shenghua Scholar Program of Central South University, Changsha, P.R. China. Weimin Chen acknowledges support by Hunan Provincial Innovation Foundation for Postgraduate, P.R. China.