Bulk and surface properties of liquid Cr-Nb-Re alloys

Experimental determination of thermodynamic and thermophysical properties of both solid and, in particular, liquid alloys at high temperatures is often technically difficult or even impossible, and therefore theoretical models can be used to estimate missing property values. Preliminary inspection of the literature related to the Cr-Nb-Re system and its binary subsystems reveals mainly theoretical results obtained in the framework of different theories, but the corresponding experimental property data are still sparse. The energetics of mixing in liquid Cr-Nb, Cr-Re and Nb-Re systems has been analysed through the study of the concentration dependence of various thermodynamic, surface (surface tension and surface composition) and structural properties (concentration fluctuations in the long-wavelength limit and chemical short-range order parameter) by the first or the quasi-chemical approximation for regular solutions, developed by Bhatia and Singh, in the framework of statistical mechanical theory in conjunction with the quasi-lattice theory. The results obtained for these binary systems have been extended to study the thermodynamics and surface properties of ternary Cr-Nb-Re liquid alloys.