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By W. N. Poundstone

The mining and ventilating system used in development work in the Pittsburgh Seam in northern West Virginia is discussed. The seam conditions and the nature of the accompanying methane gas are described. The type of equipment and the mining cycle will be discussed, showing how they are well suited for very gaseous development work. Face ventilation in development work is possibly the fastest growing problem of the industry. The coal mines of the future will be faced with the prospect of mining from under increasing depths of cover. Consequently, larger and larger amounts of methane gas probably will be found. The Pittsburgh Seam, in northern West Virginia, is an example of an area already faced with this problem. At the present time, most of the development work being done in this seam lies beneath 500 to 1200 ft of cover. The Pittsburgh Seam in this area has always been very gassy—even near the outcrop—and the recent development work has been accompanied with extremely large volumes of gas. In many cases, a single development section has liberated in excess of 1,000,000 cfm in 24 hr. This problem of heavy gas liberation was the chief concern, several years ago, when continuous mining equipment was first considered at Christopher Coal Co. All of us were apprehensive about the liberation that would accompany rapid extraction in a single working place. However, the experience during the past few years has shown that this ability to mine only one place at a time, is actually the key to working this type of coal. With all of the mining or advancement concentrated in one place, the ventilation can also be concentrated. By this it is meant that continuous mining permits the active working place to be ventilated with a maximum amount of fresh air, taken directly from the intake source without first passing another working place. Continuous mining (and a good ventilating system) also permits a much greater concentration of attention or vigilance to the actual working place. There are two things that are very important to the mining of coal having high rates of liberation. First, adequate volumes of air are necessary. Second, and perhaps more important, a mining and ventilating system must be used that will provide an uninterrupted flow of air to every portion of the working section. Liberations of this magnitude take only a few seconds of interruption for a dangerous accumulation of gas to occur. With adequate volumes of air available, the ability to concentrate ventilation more than offsets the concentration of gas emission that is inherent with continuous mining. The mining system used with continuous mining equipment at Humphrey Mine is similar to the system used at many mines in the area for development work. This system is designed to favor ventilation, realizing that other efficiencies are meaningless if the equipment must stop because of ventilation difficulties. This plan is especially well suited to minimizing ventilation interruptions. Basically, the overall plan of mining is to develop headings into virgin coal and encircle or block out large areas. These blocks are generally at least 2000 ft sq. The purpose of this blocking out is to bleed gas from the area before pillaring. Experience has shown this method to be quite effective, even in the most gassy areas. The gas in this field seems to migrate or flow readily from the solid coal into the outside return headings of the development work. The numerous clay veins and slips that are found in the area are extremely good avenues for gas flow. A block of coal, surrounded with development headings, usually bleeds off readily; and since it is cut off from the virgin coal, it is not subject to gas migration, through the seam, from this source. However, the outside return of the encircling development work, adjacent to the virgin coal, may liberate gas for years. This liberation from the outside ribs in the virgin coal is the reason split ventilation is used in development work. If split ventilation were not used, there would, in many cases, be a serious build-up of gas in the intake before it could reach the working face. Fig. 1 shows a typical development section having seven headings. The two outside places on each side are returns, and the three center headings serve as intakes. This section is equipped with a ripper-type continuous mining machine. An off-track loading machine is used to load from a surge pile on the

Jan 1, 1961

By E. W. Davis

IF the tonnage of merchantable iron ore remaining in the Lake Superior district is divided by the average of the annual shipments for the past 20 years, it will be found that this ore supply will be exhausted in approximately 35 years. This computed exhaustion period would be an indication of the future activities of the iron-mining industry if it were not for the fact that merchantable ore is being manufactured from low-grade ore, of which there is an almost inexhaustible supply in the Lake Superior district. It is true that at present only the simplest of these low-grade ores are being concentrated to any considerable extent, but progress is being made with the treatment of the more complex ores, and now, in addition to 20 washing plants on the Mesabi Range, three plants are equipped with jigs for the treatment of ore that cannot be concentrated simply by washing. The latest addition to the ore-treating plants of the Mesabi Range is a magnetic roasting and concentration plant at Cooley, Minn., in which ore that cannot be concentrated either by washing or by jigging is roasted to the magnetic state and concentrated on magnetic separators. This plant is beginning its third season of operation, and while it is too soon to make definite predictions, there are strong indica-tions that this new process may make commercially possible the manu-facture of high-grade, merchantable iron ore from large quantities of low-grade ore now considered worthless. After the iron oxide contained in an ore has been converted to mag-netite, almost any desired grade of concentrate can be produced, using magnetic-concentration equipment of the types now in general use for the concentration of the natural magnetites of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The conversion of hematite (Fe2O3) to magnetite (Fe3O4) is easily accomplished by heating the ore to a dull red tempera-ture in a reducing atmosphere. The reaction is slightly endothermic, and while it requires 200 B.t.u. to heat to 900° F. one pound of hematite ore containing 45 per cent Fe, it requires only 100 B.t.u. to convert the oxide into magnetite. In the laboratory, using small quantities of ore, this conversion is very simple, but large furnaces suitable for commercial

Jan 1, 1936

By David E. Van Dillen

INTRODUCTION Current design practices for deep tunnels make extensive use of plasticity solutions by Newmark (1970) and Hendron and Aiyer (1971). These solutions are applicable to a circular tunnel subjected to a hydrostatic stress state in a Mohr-Coulomb plastic medium. The role of rockbolts is introduced into these solutions as a uniform internal pressure equivalent to the yield stress of the rockbolt pattern. The application of these solutions is hampered by their inability to consider the biaxial nature of the in-situ stress field or any surcharged stress, such as due to blast loading. As a means of considering the biaxial stress field, designers have turned to relatively costly alternatives, such as the finite element method. The recent work of Detournay (1983) simultaneously provided two generalizations to the state of the art of the analysis of circular tunnels. Whereas the solution of Newmark applies to nondilatant Mohr-Coulomb materials, and that of Hendron and Aiyer applies to materials having associated flow rules, the solution of Detournay covers materials of arbitrary dilatancy. Secondly, Detournay's solution is valid for biaxial stress states, as long as the problem remains statically determinate (St. John, Detournay, and Fairhurst, 1984). The topic of this paper is an investigation of various alternatives for introducing the effects of rockbolts into simple tunnel design charts developed using Detournay's solution. The study was conducted using the BMINES finite element code, into which rockbolt elements have been added (St. John and Van Dillen, 1983). These rockbolt elements allow for plastic deformation of the bolt, bolt

Jan 1, 1984

By J. B. Warriner

Introduction STRIPPING is the name given to the process of removing clay, rock, or other cover from deposits of coal or ore. In this paper it is intended to cover the methods used in carrying on this operation in the anthracite coal regions of Pennsylvania. In doing this, attention will be chiefly devoted to those methods wherein practice in different sections of the region differs, or is susceptible to change or improvement, though it is intended to give as complete data as possible concerning all stages of the operation. The data from which this paper has been prepared have been collected and submitted by a committee representing the larger users of stripping methods, of which committee the writer has acted as chairman. Data and assistance have also been obtained from various mining men, engineers, contractors and manufacturers of stripping equipment, to all of whom our appreciation is clue.

Jan 1, 1917

By H. H. Alexander

PRIOR to 1915, numerous attempts were made to treat tin concentrates in the United States, but for various reasons they were unsuccessful. Tin ore is said to have been found in nearly every state, but none of the deposits have proved to be of commercial importance. The only domestic production is in Alaska, but only a few hundred tons annually have been produced; hence any considerable production of tin in the United States must be from foreign ores. The most promising occurrence of tin was found in the Black Hills, S. Dak.; in the early development stage, it was called the Cornwall of America. Associated with the tin is tungsten. The story is told that an exceedingly fine specimen of the Black Hills ore was sent to England to encourage stock promotion; the desired effect was produced until a skeptic chipped off a small piece, which the analysis showed to be wolframite. FIRST ATTEMPTS AT SMELTING One of the first promising attempts at tin smelting in the United States was made by R. T. White at Bayonne, N. J., in 1903. Mr. White, after spending some time in England studying the methods of tin smelting, organized a company called the International Tin Co., and erected a plant to treat tin concentrates from the Straits of Malacca. About the time the plant was completed, the English Government placed an export duty of 40, per cent. ad valorem on tin .concentrates exported to other than British smelters, which duty made it impossible to operate this plant so the enterprise was abandoned. As this export duty is still effective, the only source of tin-ore supply for 'the United States is the Bolivian concentrates.

Jan 3, 1924

By Arthur G. Levy, Henry M. How

The purpose of the investigation on which this paper is based is to determine whether the structural change which occurs in the slow cooling of steel below the transformation range has an important effect on its engineering properties. We recognize two distinct things which occur in steel when it is brought from above to below the transformation range, first, the transformation proper, that is, the breaking up of the austenite or solid solution of the cementite in the remainder of the iron, and the liberation of its components as undissolved cementite and as ferrite or alpha iron; and second, a structural change consisting in the gradual coalescence of the ferrite and cementite respectively into larger and larger separate masses. Let us distinguish these from each other by speaking of them as " the transformation " and " the structural change " respectively. If the cooling is at all rapid the unevenness of contraction induces severe stress; so that in a sense a slow cooling has a third influence, the prevention of such stress. This transformation from austenite to ferrite plus cementite can complete itself only below the transformation range; and, because this structural change is a change in the structural arrangement of the products of that transformation, it too can complete itself only at temperatures below that range, say below 725°; and of these temperatures it is only those between 600° and 725° that give the metal sufficient mobility to permit this structural rearrangement to progress with ally rapidity. The transformation is now known to be rapid, but the structural change is relatively slow. The transformation, the liberation of the dissolved cementite from the state of solution in the austenite to a free state, leaves the steel structurally in the

Jan 1, 1913

By Elmer W. Pehrson

THE founding of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in 1871 came at an unusually significant moment in the life of our country. The industrial revolution, in which mineral production played a major role, was just getting underway. The iron industry, established several decades earlier, was reaching sizable proportions. In 1871 pig-iron production was approaching 2 million tons, and the industry had spread as far west as Missouri and Wisconsin. The chief sources of iron ore were Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Michigan. The age of steel was in its infancy; production had not yet reached 100,000 tons per annum. The gold rush to California two decades earlier and the discovery of other gold and silver bonanzas in the West paved the way for the transcontinental railways, which were then being built and which contributed much to the subsequent development of the great copper, lead, and zinc districts of the Rocky Mountain area. Regular production of copper in the Michigan peninsula and of lead in Missouri and the upper Mississippi region had been established for many years but on a scale dwarfed by the quantities later required as technical progress, invention and enterprise made possible the rapid expansion of industry. Discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in 1859, the growing recognition of the

Jan 1, 1947

By R. S. Goodrich, G. S. Ansell

The microstructure of three Al-Al2O3 SAP-Type alloys (containing 2.0, 3.0, and 5.7 wt pct alumina, respectively) was studied utilizing transmission electron microscopy. These alloys were fabricated from aluminum powders by powder-metallurgical techniques, cold-rolled into thin strips, and recrys -tallized. Thin foils suitable for an electron-transmission study were then prepared from the strip material by electropolishing. The microstructure of these alloys is shown to consist of small (0.1 mean diameter) plate -shaped alumina particles finely distributed in an aluminum matrix. In the higher-oxide content alloys the platelets are somewhat larger and more irregular in shape. The distribution of oxide particles is not uniform and there is an increasing tendency toward clumping SINCE the discovery by Irmann1 that aluminum alloys produced by compacting, hot pressing, and extruding fine aluminum powders possess remarkable high-temperature mechanical properties, the Al-A12O3 SAP-Type alloys have been utilized extensively as model dispersion-strengthened alloys in both experimental and theoretical invest igations.2-8 The use of the SAP-Type alloys as model dispersion-strengthened alloys implicitly assumes that their microstructure has been completely delineated. This is, however, not the case. with increasing oxide content. In all the alloys studied, the mean center-to-center spacing of particles was quite small (0.2 u) due to the very fine oxide debris present. Selected-area diffraction of the specimen identified the oxide as either y Al2O3 or y' Al2o3. The re crystallized MD-5100 alloy exhibited a mean grain diameter of only 0.7u, while the grain size of the other alloys was several hundred microns. Severe pinning of the grain boundaries by oxide particles was rarely observed, and the grain boundary triple points in the small-grained MD-5100 alloy were often particle -free. Diffraction contrasts visible around the particles are attributed to elastic strain fields set up by differential thermal contraction during cooling from the recrystallization anneal. Early investigation demonstrated that optical metallography did not possess sufficient resolution to observe the microstructure of the SAP-Type alloys.' Later, extensive use was made of replication techniques to study the microstructure by means of electron microscopy.7-9 These studies indicated that the SAP-Type alloys consist of a dispertion of irregular Al2O3 platelets, approximately 150A thick 9 and a micron or so on edge,9 distributed in a matrix of commercial-purity aluminum. These oxide platelets tend to be oriented in the aluminum matrix, with their largest dimension parallel to the extrusion direction. 8,9 A study employing polarized-light techniques1' indicated that the grain size of a series of as-extruded SAP-Type alloys was several microns in diameter, while the grain size after re-crystallization was several millimeters in diameter. A more recent study 12 utilizing surface-replication techniques examined the particle morphology,

Jan 1, 1964

By E. F. Kingsbury

One of the well-known and important uses of the noble or precious metals has been for electrical contacts. In fact, the elements of this group, comprising gold, silver and the six platinum metals, have been called "noble" because of their ability to resist heat and corrosion, properties which were early found to be of importance in good contacts. Of these, platinum and its iridium alloys, palladium, and silver, have been extensively used. In recent years the electrical industry has been responsible for about one-eighth of the total consiimption of the platinum metals in the United States. Information is not available as to what part of this one-eighth has been used for contacts but it is certainly an important one. Substitutes for Platinum During the past 20 years a considerable number of contact alloys have been proposed in the patent literature largely with the aim of more or less replacing platinum by gold or silver, and some of these alloys are finding increasingly widespread application as the reliability of their performance becomes established. From even the partial data at hand it appears that this substitution by the less precious metals has replaced at least one-half of the amount of platinum that the entire electrical industry would otherwise be consuming at the present time. While the subject is of considerable interest to the metallurgist it is even more so to the electrical engineer and it is surprising that the literature records no systematic and comprehensive investigation along these lines. Practically all the scattered work on noble metal contacts has centered around platinum as a standard and has had two more or less distinct aims. One of these has been the replacement of platinum by cheaper matcrials, and the other, the dcveloprnent of materials of superior electrical performance. The merit of a contact metal has been assumed to be dependent on its infusibility, and since thc more precious metals have the higher melting points there has naturally been an association of the two qualities in the sense that the more precious were

By P. S. Kotval, O. H. Nestor

Stacking fault energy measurements of nickel-base alloys have been mainly confined to binary and ternary systems. In this paper, the stacking fault energy has been measured by the rolling texture method in a series of ten alloys which comprise successive additions of Cr, Mo, Fe, and C to pure nickel, eventually resulting in an alloy of the composition of Hastelloy alloy X. The alloys studied here are single-phase, solid solutions with the exception of two alloys in which some undissolved particles of "primary" carbide have been retained. It is found that successive additions of chromium, molybdenum, and iron all lower the stacking fault energy, with iron having only a minor effect. The stacking fault energy is found to increase when carbon is added in solid solution. The results from the rolling texture measurements are correlated with thin foil observations of dislocation substructures in these alloys. In a recent paper' it was pointed out that the dislocation substructure of various superalloy matrices could be classified into three broad categories based on 'high', 'medium', and 'low' stacking fault energy. It has also been demonstrated2 that the dislocation substructure in each of these categories has a well defined role in the nucleation of strengthening precipitates which is different from the role played by the dislocation substructure in other categories. Thus, it becomes desirable to understand the influence of various solute elements on the stacking fault energy and hence on the dislocation substructure of the matrix, before any further development of superalloys by mi-crostructural predesign can be undertaken. Recently, Beeston and France have studied the influence of increasing solute additions on the stacking fault energy of a series of binary nickel-base alloys relevant to the Nimonic series using the rolling texture method, and have then estimated the effect of a given alloy addition in five commercial Nimonic alloys. However, comparison with stacking fault energy data from other investigations''5 suggests that the influence of a given solute element in a nickel-base binary system is not necessarily the same in a ternary or more complex superalloy system. Accordingly, the present work was undertaken to study the effect of successive addition of solute elements to pure nickel, the final composition being the nominal composition of Hastelloy X. The rolling texture method of stacking fault energy measurement was used since it can be used for the whole range of stacking fault energy values and does not have the disadvantage of, say, the Node method which is only applicable to low values of stacking fault energy. In addition, the rolling texture method provides a means of determining the stacking fault energy which is statistically more significant than that provided by other methods. EXPERIMENTAL TECHNIQUES Button heats of alloys of the compositions shown in Table I were prepared. Each button was remelted not less than four times. After a slight deformation (approximately 5 pct) all alloys were homogenized at 2200°F except alloys, H . I, and J. Alloys H and I were solution heat treated at 2150°F and alloy J at 2282OF. The buttons were cold worked by rolling, using "end-to-end" passes and intermediate anneals at the homogenization temperatures mentioned above. After each annealing treatment the samples were rapidly water quenched to avoid any precipitation. In alloys F and I, however, a few particles of "primary" carbides were retained even after the homogenization treatments at the temperatures mentioned above. Part of the solution heat treated material was cold worked to 0.04-in.-thick sheet and the penultimate reduction was -50 pct of deformation as recommended by Dillamore et al. All annealing was carried out in vacuo within sealed quartz capsules. Some of the material from each alloy was rolled down further to 0.004 in. strip for thin foil transmission electron microscopy specimens. Specimens of this strip were annealed at the homogenization temperature for 1 hr and then strained 7 pct by rolling at room temperature. Thin foils were prepared from the strip specimens by the 'window" technique using an Ethanol-Perchloric acid electrolyte at 32°F and a voltage of 22 v. Stainless steel cathodes were employed. All transmission electron microscopy was performed in a JEM-7 electron microscope using an accelerating voltage of 100 kv. Specimens from the 0.04 in. sheet which had been rolled -60 pct in the final pass were electropolished to remove the surface layers to a depth of approximately 0.002 in. Rolling texture pole figures for all the alloys were determined using a Schulz ring and nickel filtered CuKa radiation at 50 kv and 20 ma. The texture parameter Io/(lo + I,,) (where Io is the

Jan 1, 1970

By L. D. Ricketts

Discussion of the paper of L. D. RICKETTS, presented at the San Francisco meeting, September, 1915, and printed in Bulletin No. 100, April, 1915, pp. 711 to 737. FREDERICK LAIST, Anaconda, Mont.-I am going to tell you of some of the results we have been getting in Anaconda during the past two or three months in a large plant which was finished in May. We commenced work in Anaconda a year and a half ago on the construction of a leaching plant which was to have a capacity of 2,000 tons per day. The plant was to treat tailings from the concentrator, containing about 12 1b. of copper to the ton. During the past year we changed our plans and decided to use the flotation process on the tailings from the concentrator, which contained no oxidized copper, and apply the leaching process only to tailings which had accumulated in a large dump below the works. This dump contains about 15,000,000 tons of tailings, and since some of the copper in it is oxidized, we felt that the application of the flotation process would result in the loss of too much of the oxidized copper, particularly as time went on. In starting up we had a number of difficulties to overcome, as is usually the case. They were not of a serious character. The results obtained, so far, have been decidedly encouraging. During July the plant treated a total of 50,000 tons of tailings, or an average of 1,610 tons per clay. The extraction was about 83 per cent., which, on material of the grade treated, meant a. tailing assaying under 0.1 per cent. copper. The acid consumption was about 65 lb. per ton, and the fuel percentage in. roasting was about 4 ¼ . We expect to cut the fuel percentage in the next month or two to about 3 per cent., the high percentage during July being clue to starting up and shutting clown furnaces. We find that iron builds up in the solution to a marked degree. This is not a serious platter with us, because we have cheap sulphuric acid and can reject solution whenever it gets too foul. The extraction of silver has been remarkably good in the large plant. It has averaged better than 75 per cent. It seems that so long as we maintain salt in the solution to a percentage of 10 per cent., the extraction is good. We allowed the salt to fall off in order to find how low a percentage we could use. At about 7 per cent. the silver extraction fell to 65 per cent. This was to be expected, because silver chloride is soluble in strong brine, but not in weak brine.

Jan 12, 1915

By William B. Plank

ENGINEERING students to the number of 73,269 had been enrolled in United States and Canadian schools on Nov. 5, 1945, but, as shown in the following tables, even this sizable number will not greatly remedy the 150,000 deficit reported by Vannevar Bush, director of the U. S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, to exist in the engineering and scientific man-power supply. These figures were received in advance from the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, and are given in detail in the January 1946 issue of the Journal of Engineering Education. Although the enrollment on Nov. 5 was an increase of 76% over the low of 41,632 in 1944-45, it was still 36% below the peak enrollment in 1941-42 of 115, 228. These figures include both undergraduate students and graduate students in the schools of the United States and Canada and are therefore comparable. As was to be expected, almost half of this enrollment is in the first or freshman year and 25% of the total are veterans. Also, 1,850, or about 2.5%, are women. A measure of the seriousness of the engineering graduate supply in these two countries is indicated by the trend of the number of first degrees that have been conferred during this period of scarcity:

Jan 1, 1946

By R. I. Jaffee, F. C. Holden, H. R. Ogden

The properties of quenched Ti-Fe alloys have been correlated with their microstruc-tures. For specimens quenched from equilibrium in the a-ß field, the dominant micro-structural variable is the a-ß ratio. A comparison of specimens having equiaxed a-ß structures with those having acicular a-ß structures shows that the equiaxed specimens have better tensile ductility, but lower impact resistance. There is evidence to show that specimens with acicular structures reach equilibrium in the a-ß field more rapidly than specimens with equiaxed structures. Both strength and ductility are lowered by heat treatments below 700°C. IN previous work,1, 2 certain principles of the physical metallurgy of a-ß titanium alloys have been evolved. Most of these principles have been based on data obtained on alloy systems which undergo no eutectoid reaction, or in which the eutec-toid reaction is so sluggish as to be inoperative. The alloy systems previously studied included the Ti-Mn alloys, with and without a-stabilizing additions, and the binary Ti-Mo alloys. The most important of these principles are: I) The compositional factors which affect mechanical properties are solid solution strengthening, the martensite transformation, and instability of

Jan 1, 1957

By Paul G. Shewmon

The migration of slightly solzrhle spherical particles through a solid under the infllrence of a temperature gradient is analylzed for the cases of various transport mechanisms. It is shown that the variation of the velocity of the particles with radius, r, depends on the dominant mechanism of matter transport around or through the inclusion. Thus the velocity varies as r-1 jor surface-dijf1~sion controlled migratzon. is independent of r for volume diffusion in either phase, and varies as if the rate is determined by an interfacial reaction (n is the order of the interfacia1 reaction). These same results hold tor the migration of a cvlinder of length much greater than its radius. and .for other types of potential gradients, e.g., an electrical field. These equations are combined with recent electron-microscopic ohservations to show that the rate of migratzolz of small helium-silled bubbles through copper is determined by surface diffusion of the metal atoms. With these equations and the temperature gradients attainahle in an electron-microscope joil, the dominant transpar/ mechanism (or any migrating pnrtzclos can he determined. AS a result of fission, rare-gas atoms are created in the hot fuel element of a nuclear reactor. These insoluble atoms precipitate to form bubbles of the gas in the fuel. The subsequent migration and coalescence of these bubbles is thought to play a dominant role in the swelling of fuel elements which in turn can limit the fuel-element life. As a result of this practical problem and because of the relative simplicity of the system, workers in several laboratories have imbedded rare-gas atoms in metals with the aid of an accelerator and studied the formation and behavior of the bubbles that form on annealing. Recently Barnes and Mazey have studied the migration of such helium-filled bubbles in copper foils using the electron microscope and the temperature gradient that can be induced in the foil by the electron beam. They found that the smaller bubbles moved faster than the larger ones. It is shown below that, if this is true, the rate-controlling step in their migration is surface diffusion of metal atoms instead of volume diffusion, vapor transport, or an interfacial reaction. The analysis given is in no way limited to gaseous inclusions so the variation of velocity with particle size for any relatively insoluble precipitate particles could be used to obtain information about the relative importance of surface diffusion, volume diffusion, and interfacial reaction in such two-phase systems. VOID MIGRATION IN A TEMPERATURE-GRADIENT ANALYSIS Barnes' studies indicate that helium does not dissolve or diffuse in metals to a measurable extent, so that when the voids move they must do so through the movement of metal atoms from the leading to the trailing sides of the void.' Thus voids might move by surface diffusion, diffusion of vacancies in the surrounding lattice, or vapor transport. We consider first the case of flow by surface diffusion alone. We assume that there is a force, in the sense of irreversible thermodynamics, tending to move the atoms around the bubble in a given direction. We designate this direction as the x axis and the force per atom as Fa. The net rate of flow of atoms from one side of the bubble to the other, under the influence of this force, is the surface flux, Js, times the cross-sectional area available for flow, A,. A, is taken as the circumference times the thickness of the high-diffusivity surface layer 6. Thus where 51 is the atomic volume. For bubbles to advance a distance dx, a volume equal to nr : dx must flow around the void so that The minus sign enters because the bubble moves in the direction opposite to that of the force on the atoms. Equations for volume diffusion and diffusion through the vapor can be obtained in the same manner. For vapor transport we have Ag = and the ratio of the densities of metal atoms in the gas and the solid (pg/pl) enters so that

Jan 1, 1964

By G. R. Kotler, W. A. Tiller, H. V. Ashcom, S. O&apos, Hara, W. C. Johnston

The grain-refinement effect of electromagnetic stirring of Sn-Pb alloys during solidification is investigated at higher field strength and in larger-sized samples. It is found that the grain-refining effect is due to a crystal multiplication phenomenon rather than a nucleation phenomenon. The effect increases with sample size for a fixed field strength and a fixed supercooling bath temperatures. The effect in other alloys was investigated. IN a recent publication1 it was reported that significant grain refinement could be produced during the solidification of a supercooled melt of Sn-Pb alloy when a critical degree of electromagnetic stirring was present in the melt. Thus, for a particular supercooling, AT, a critical magnetic field, Hc, existed at which the number of grains per unit volume, n, increased rather abruptly by a factor of 103 to 104 as the field, H, was increased by a small amount. It was further found that the undercooling at which the melt spontaneously nucleated, ?Tn, was independent of the magnetic field. These authors matched their experimental results against the qualitative expectations of existing theories and found each theory somewhat unsatisfactory. One important question that was not answered in this previous work was "should the effect be classed as a nucleation phenomenon or as a crystal-multiplication phenomenon?" Other valid questions that need answering are: i) do higher magnetic field strengths alter the nature of the results?; ii) what is the effect of higher lead content in the alloy?; iii) what changes occur when one extends the experiments to larger-diameter samples?; and iv) is this a universal effect applicable to the grain refinement of all materials? The present work directs its attention to answering these five questions. The

Jan 1, 1965

By J. Larsen-Badse

The resistance to dry sliding abrasion us been measured for some hardened and tempered carbon steels. The wear resistance, defined as the reciprocal of the volume loss per unit sliding distance, is found to vary linearly with the hardness of the abraded surface. The data fit two lines, one, of high slope, for the pure metals and for the annealed steels and another, of smaller slope, for the hardened and tempered carbon steels. A relationship is developed showing the alwasion resistance to be proportional to the hardness of the material and to en, where n is the exponent of work hardening. The values of n and of the hardness FOR most materials a high resistance to abrasion is generally associated with a high value of indentation hardness. Brine11 even used the abrasion resistance as a measure of hardness in an attempt at expanding the hardness range covered by his indentation-hardness test.' When comparing different types of materials there is, however, only a very general relation between abrasion resistance and hardness. Sample brittleness seems to contribute to the deviation from a direct relationship. In general, increased brittle- are those relating to the heavily deformed abraded surface. However, for materials having n constant or varying m a regular manner over a wide range of strailts, the wear resistance will also be a linear function of the bulk hardness of the material. For tempered steels containing a dispersion of cementite in ferrite the increase in wear resistance due to the dispersion is found to be a linear function of the volume fraction of Fe3C and of the reciprocal of the mean free ferrite path. This indicates indirectly that the yielding of this material, when it is already heavily deformed, follows the Orowan criterion. ness leads to decreased abrasion resistance.' When comparing materials in the same group, e.g., the metals, the spread is less. Kruschov found that the abrasion resistance of pure metals and of annealed steels is directly proportional to the hardness of the metal. For hardened and tempered steels he obtained another linear relationship, one of smaller slope and intersecting the line for the pure metals at the location of the data for the annealed steels. He also found that the abrasion resistance of cold-worked metals is independent of the degree of cold working. This shows, as he concluded, that the process of abrasion work hardens the metal in the surface region to a very high degree.

Jan 1, 1967

By J. Halpern, D. R. McKay

SOME of the most important hydrometallurgical developments in recent years relate to processes involving the oxidation of sulfide minerals in aque- ous suspension at elevated temperatures by air or oxygen under pressure. Among these is the acid pressure-leach process which has been developed, particularly for the treatment of pyritic uranium ores.1-5 In this process, an aqueous suspension of the ore is digested in an autoclave, in which an overpressure of air or oxygen is maintained, at temperatures above 100°C. Oxidation of the pyrite (FeS,)

Jan 1, 1959

By Bartlett W. Paulding

Since its introduction to the petroleum industry in 1949 by Clark,1 hydraulic fracturing or "hydrafracing" has developed into a widely respected and useful technique for increasing production from petroleum reservoirs. Even then, Clark described production increases of from 6 to 100 barrels of oil per day (bopd). Since that time, others have described treatments in which production increased from 12 to 456 bopd, from only a show to 40 bopd;2 from 48 to 219 bopd; 3 from 500 to 1400 bopd and from a show to 192 bopd.4 Although representative of only a few of many successful hydraulic fracturing operational6 these increases in production attest to the past and potential value of the hydrafracing technique to the petroleum industry. The technique has received a considerable amount of theoretical and experimental attention.1, 5-20 Unfortunately, however, the degree of general understanding of the mechanics of hydraulic fracturing is still inadequate to solve many recurring problems. The practicing engineer is plagued with difficulties in predicting such factors as: (1) the required pressure and viscosity of the fracturing fluid to not only induce the fracture but to control the extent of its growth, (2) the strength characteristics and amount of proppant to include in the fluid so that the fracture is held open once the fluid pressure is decreased, and (3) the volume of the reservoir influenced by the induced fractures and the resulting increase in production. A major cause of these difficulties is the uncertainty associated with determining the orientation of the hydraulically induced fractures. One's natural conclusion in considering the problem is that the orientation of the fracture would depend on several variables, as, for example, the relationship between the viscosity and injection rate of the fluid and the

Jan 1, 1968

By M. Cohen, S. A. Kulin

AT a recent symposium on thermodynamics in physical metallurgy1 two opposing theories of the austenite-martensite transformation were presented. Both theories agreed that this type of reaction involves a nucleation process which requires activation and that the activated nuclei develop into the well-known martensite plates with tremendous speed. However, there were essential differences in the two points of view concerning the nature of the nucleus and the mechanism by which the nucleus propagates. According to Cohen, Machlin, and Paranjpe,' the nucleus is a strain center with sufficient elastic energy to initiate a cooperative displacement among the atoms of the parent phase when a sufficiently low temperature is reached. This displacement propagates as a wave in shear-like fashion to transform the austenite into martensite without benefit of diffusion. On the other hand, Fisher, Hollomon, and Turnbull3 regard the nucleus as a solute-poor region (in the austenite) of a size which becomes supercritical relative to coherent growth into martensite when an appropriately low temperature is reached. This growth process is taken to be an atom-by- atom transfer from the receding austenite lattice to the advancing martensite lattice through the coherent interface that exists between the two phases. The present paper is not conceded with the divergent views as to the nature of the nucleus but describes some critical experiments which differentiate between the two proposed mechanisms of propagation. Fisher' has summarized the latter issue in the following way: According to the cooperative displacement theory, the speed of formation of mar-tensite plates should not be decreased by lowering the temperature, and martensite should form with extreme rapidity at very low temperatures; whereas with the alternate growth process, the speed of the martensite transformation should be retarded at very low temperatures, decreasing to zero at the absolute zero. The atom-by-atom growth mechanism predicts a marked slowing down of the reaction rate with decreasing temperature because the rate of self-diffusion in the austenite is involved in this picture. For example, Fisher, Hollomon and Turn-bull5 estimate that the activation energy for this growth process in steel is (0.34)2(0.36)* times the activation energy for self-diffusion in y-iron. The two most recent determinations of the latter quantity are 67,900" and 74,2007 cal/mol, which may be averaged as 71,000 cal/mol. This, in turn, gives a value of 3000 cal/mol for the activation energy of the atom-by-atom process, and hence the rate of growth should vary as e 8,000/RT where R is the gas constant

Jan 1, 1951

By E. Gregory, A. Coucoulas

Carbm dioxide, which exists metastably as a constantly subliming molecular solid in a normal room-temperature environment, has been shown to exhibit many microstructural features which are similar to those observed in metals and ceramics at temperatures approaching their melting points. An examinution has been made of some of the factors affecting a brittleness condition known as "smzdiness" which occurs in solid carbon dioxide. It has been shown to be highly dependent on manufacturing and storage conditions and is thought to be a marked intergranu-lay brittleness which results from a combination of excessive grain growth and a concentration of gas-filled pores at the grain boundaries. In the course of an investigation carried out to explain certain physical and mechanical properties of solid carbon dioxide, observations were made of the microstructure and fragmentation of samples after fabrication and storage under varying conditions. Many similarities between the structures of solid carbon dioxide observed under ambient conditions and those existing in metal and ceramic systems at temperatures approaching their melting points have been observed. There are, however, important differences between solid carbon dioxide and the common metallic and ionic solids which result primarily from the differences in the nature of the bonding forces. Despite these differences, the relative ease with which certain microscopic observations can be carried out, may make solid carbon dioxide a useful material model for the physical metallurgist and the ceramist. It could also prove a valuable material for educational purposes where it is required to illustrate grain phenomena which normally can only be seen with the aid of a high-temperature microscope, and after prolonged chemical or thermal etching.

Jan 1, 1963