Viscosity and Density Measurements of High Temperature Melts

Since the viscosity and density are most fundamental properties for any fluids, many efforts to obtain reliable values have been made. However, the measurements are not so easy, especially at high temperature in molten state. The high temperature melts are typically classified into molten metals, molten salts, and molten oxides. They appear in many industrial processes, for example, steelmaking, nonferrous metallurgy, aluminum smelting, foundry, glass making, etc. The adaptable methods for the measurements should be chosen carefully by considering some physical and chemical properties of the melt. Iida published the review on the properties including viscosity and density of molten metals [1], and the comparison among the viscosities of molten iron reported by many researchers showed considerable difference of several dozen percent. The viscosity value is in considerably wide range depending on the groups of the melts, for example, in general low for molten metals and high for molten silicates, including slag and glass, and the difference reaches more than ten orders by reflecting the difference in the melt structure. On the other hand, density is mainly depending on atomic mass and not so different to each other because of not so big difference in molar volumes of the components. Various methods for viscosity and density measurement were also introduced [2] and also the viscometries were summarized [3].