Viscosities and Gibbs Energies - On a Common Structural Base

The present paper reviews the extensive work carried out with respect to the modeling of viscosities of high temperature melts carried out in the Division of Metallurgy, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. This work was inspired to a great extent by a past collaboration with Professor Ken Mills at Imperial College, London, UK. A thermodynamic approach based on Richardson's theory of ideal mixing of silicates, was used to predict the viscosities of binary silicates. The second derivative of In η with respect to composition was used to predict the setting of ordering in a homogeneous silicate melt during cooling as it approaches the liquidus temperature. The paper clearly demonstrates the powerfulness of the thermodynamic approach to physical properties of high temperature melts.