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By George Rice

WHEN miners in the interior coal fields of the United States began the practice of blasting the coal without undercutting, or what is known as "shooting off the solid," many explosions resulted, some of them of great extent and 'violence, and attended with large loss of life. One of the means adopted for preventing this large loss of life, though not preventive of explosions, was to employ shot firers to discharge the shots when all the other employees had gone out of the mine at the end of the day's shift. This system still prevails in most of the Central and Southwestern mines. Following the disaster at Winter Quarters mine, Utah, May 1, 1900, in which 200 lives were lost, a system of firing shots electrically from outside and when the men were out of the mine was adopted at the mines of the Utah Fuel Co.1 This system has also been used in France in certain mines that are subject to instantaneous outbursts of carbonic acid gas. These outbursts generally occurred at shot-firing time, on account of the blasts releasing the gas held in crevices under high pressure. The system was also adopted at a number of other mines in Utah, at the Cokedale mine, Colorado, at the Dawson mines, New Mexico, and in some mines of the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co. in the Birmingham Ala. district; and more recently in certain mines in Iowa and Kansas. At first there was considerable trouble from misfires, and in a few instances from premature firing, while men were in the mine, through the shot-firing lines becoming crossed with power lines. Fortunately, however, no loss of life resulted from such premature firing within the knowledge of the writers, and latterly this danger has been reduced to a minimum by certain measures of precaution. The proportion of misfires, or failures of individual shots to fire, has also been reduced to a very small

Jan 10, 1914

Future of State and Federal Oil Regulation. BY NORTHCUTT ELY (Trans , vol 118 2400 words) The Interstate Oil Compact, ratified by six states and Congress in 1935, replaced the petroleum code, invalidated with other codes by the Schechter decision This compact endeavors, first, to conserve reservoir energy of oil pools through substantially uniform conservation measures by the states, second, it recognizes the state rather than the Federal Government as possessing the necessary police power for that purpose, third, it establishes an interstate advisory commission, so that orderly production in one state is not penalized by uncontrolled production in another, fourth, Federal interests are recognized in the control of hot oil, regulation of imports and fact-finding forecasts of supply and demand by the Bureau of Mmes It is not as complete an instrument as proposed by the Federal Oil Conservation Board in 1932, but is workable, and will be effective in proportion to the support given it by the industry Three results may follow First, now that fear of Federal control has subsided, the industry may lose interest in the compact and let it fall to pieces, second, if vigorously supported by the industry, the compact can accomplish most of the conservation objectives sought by the Federal control measures now believed unconstitutional, third, if the Compact fails, Federal regulation is almost certain to be revived, and can probably be sustained in connection with neutrality legislation, regulation of interstate pipe lines, and coordination of Federal and state gasoline taxes Nearly every step toward governmental regulation has originated within the industry state proration, the Federal petroleum code, Federal control of imports, Federal control of hot oil are examples The Compact shows a trend toward coordination between the powers of the industry, the state government, and the Federal Government If this arrangement fails through lack of interest by the oil industry, the next step is likely to be absorption by the Federal Government of the other two factors involved in the situation

Jan 1, 1937

By G. B. Clark

Dynamic rock mechanic as it pertains to blasting has involved several areas of active research effort. Among the important problems which have been the subject of research are wave mechanics in rocks, mechanisms of rock breakage, cratering, applications of similitude, energy partitioning of explosives, coupling, and other related factors. In some of these areas many problems have received fairly complete answers, while in others, investigations have raised new questions while attempting to answer existing ones. The slabbing mechanism explains many of the phenomena observed in blasting, but is hot the complete answer to observed breakage and fragmentation phenomena. There is currently a gap between coupling experimental results and theory. Applications of similitude to open pit blasting have been made unnecessarily complicated. Basic scaling laws for large true and apparent craters have not been derived for either chemical or nuclear explosives. There are few useful data and little developed theory on the partitioning of energy of explosives in all types of blasting. No suitable mathematical model has been developed which will describe the stress waves in rock which are responsible for rock breakage: Significant progress has been and is being made in these areas of research, however. ELASTIC AND NONELASTIC WAVES Complete solutions for spherical wave equations in viscoelastic media are not available in the literature. Equations for certain viscoelastic models do show limited promise, however, of being applicable to rock masses, particularly for pulse type phenomena. Seismic investigations, blasting operations, the design of protective underground structures, and the evaluation of other explosive effects in solids would be greatly bene-

Jan 1, 1967

By G. C. Bateman

THE Workmen's Compensation Act of Ontario was passed in 1915 and Miners' Phthisis was added to the list of compensable industrial diseases in 1916. Under this provision of the Act only about two cases were compensated per year. In 1924, The Department of Public Health made a survey of miners in the four principal camps-Sudbury, Porcupine, Kirkland Lake and Cobalt--and the survey indicated that an alarming proportion of the men exposed to dust had silicosis in one or other of its several stages. A number of conferences were held between representatives of the Department of Mines, the Department of Public Health, the Compensation Board and the mine operators. The operators were advised that in the earliest stages of silicosis there was no physical disability and if men in that stage were removed from underground there would be little danger of permanent disability. They were further advised that if active steps were taken at once to compensate men that had some real disability and remove from the mines men in the early stages of silicosis, the first cost would be the greatest and thereafter their liability should decrease. As a result of this advice, and having at that time no reason to doubt the findings of the survey, the operators agreed to do all that was asked of them and cooperate with the Government in the steps believed necessary to meet the situation, and to provide compensation for the men affected. Amendments In 1926 Arrangements were made for the necessary amendments to the Mines Act and the Workmen's Compensation Act and these amendments were passed in 1926. The Amendment to the Mines Act provided that all underground employees must be the holders of certificates certifying that they were free from tuberculosis of the respiratory organs and further provided that the certificates must be renewed annually. The Government, however, at that time refused to adopt a form of certificate for applicants certifying as to their physical fitness for underground work. The Amendments to the Compensation Act defined both silicosis and

Jan 1, 1937

By R. W. Raymond

THE question, what is the best proportion among weight, fall, and speed of stamps, is one which has not yet received thorough and systematic examination. In considering the economical application of stamping machinery, we meet, at the beginning, with serious difficulties in obtaining accurate data for comparison. The weight and fall of stamps vary as the shoes and dies wear out; and this may lead to a change of speed also. Moreover, defects in engines, boilers, or machinery for the transmission of power, may occasion serious losses, which cannot fairly be charged to the arrangements of the stamps proper. Again, the capacity of stamp-mills is directly dependent, in some degree, upon the nature and extent of discharge, fineness of screens, and other peculiarities of the battery. Finally, the hardness and tenacity of the rock crushed varies so much that comparisons between different localities cannot be implicitly trusted. The safest experiments are those made in the same mill, by changing first one and then another condition of working; but this is seldom possible for such conditions as weight and lift of stamps, and only within narrow limits for their speed. We may eliminate of friction, transmission, and generation of power, in the case of stamps, by measuring the power actually developed by their fall. Thus, the weight, multiplied into the fall in feet, and the number of drops per minute, gives us exactly the number of foot-pounds exerted by each stamp. Dividing by 33,000, the number of foot-pounds per minute in one-horse power, we have the horse-power per stamp, from which the effective power of the whole mill may be obtained. Dividing the amount of rock crushed daily by the effective horse-power, gives us the daily amount per horse-power ; and this is the best measure that can be obtained for the effectiveness of the stamps. A complete discussion of the subject would require us to determine the exact influence of the discharge, etc., and the exact resistance offered by different classes of rocks, for both of which points the data are wanting. Professor J. D. Hague, in the third volume of the United States Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, gives a valuable

ANYONE who wishes to make the patterns for statues in order to cast them later in bronze, even though he himself is the artificer who made them, must take many things into consideration: first, whether they are large or small, and whether they are wholly round or only in part; then of what material they are made, for the way that can be followed if they are of wax cannot be used if they are of clay, wood, marble, or even of plaster; likewise he must consider whether or not it has irons inside to support it. There is also a great difference in facility if the support is placed more in. one way than in another. Great consideration should be given to whether it is to be made hollow or solid. If you have not been the workman yourself, you must at least have been an active helper in this and in every other part in order to be able to observe everything without a fault. For if they are large it is necessary to make their moulds in pieces, with marks and measurements so that you can replace them-at will exactly in the same order and in the same places after they have been taken out. But if you are the artificer [as well as sculptor] the process is made easier. Taking the ordinary way and, over an iron, make out of well beaten moulding clay, compounded with cloth clippings a core exactly as the statue is to be or however large you wish the hollow to be. Dry and bake it. On top of this work the wax, thickening it all over as much as you wish the bronze to be and finish it completely, remembering to arrange that the base may come out solid with bronze so as to support the whole work. Then take some rods of hammered bronze one dito thick and one palmo long. Pass these throughs the thickness of the wax and fasten them in several places in the core of clay that you made. [81] Do it so that they, project out of the wax a good three or four dita. These are, put in so that when the wax is removed the core is held in the middle of the mould that forms the outer part, and this outer part is held by the inner part, namely the core, so that the mould may not move in any part from its place even when it is handled. This done, take some of that clay made with well-prepared cloth clippings as I taught you, and mix with it if you wish some wash ashes or

Jan 1, 1942

By Leonard D. Jaffe

IN recent years, the advantages of tempered martensite as a microstructure for steel parts have been well established. For parts that must not fracture brittlely when loaded at high rates, at low temperatures, or under conditions of combined stress, tempered martensite is especially desirable. One of the factors that determine whether a steel part will have a martensitic structure after heat treatment is the hardenability of the steel. Despite the large amount of recent research, there are still many unsettled basic questions concerning hardenability and its relation to chemical composition, and, indeed, considerable disagreement among investigators in the field. Much of the uncertainty that beclouds the existing knowledge of hardenability arises from the fact that hardenability is still a wholly empirical concept, and has not been quantitatively related to the more fundamental knowledge of isothermal decomposition of austenite. Hardenability is, essentially, a measure of the time required for small percentages of austenite to decompose, during continuous cooling, to pearlite, bainite, proeutectoid ferrite, or proeutectoid carbide. In the practical heat-treatment of steel, also, the decomposition of austenite is usually not isothermal but rather during cooling, or, in general, is not at a single constant temperature. Thus, both hardenability and practical heat treatment involve anisothermal decomposition of austenite. In a previous publication1 the author and his collaborators outlined the principles that govern the relations between isothermal and anisothermal decomposition of austenite, and reviewed the experimental information available in 1945. To avoid repetition, familiarity with that article (Paper 1) will be assumed, and attention given primarily to work carried out or published since 1945. The method generally employed was explained in Paper 1: anisothermal transformation is studied through investigation of the effect of holding austenite at one temperature upon its subsequent decomposition at another temperature. Both temperatures are below the stability range of the austenite. This paper is confined to studies in which only a small amount of transformation occurred at the first temperature. This is the only case of importance in practical heat treatment when an essentially martensitic structure is sought. MATERIALS AND PROCEDURE It was necessary to use different steels for the studies involving proeutectoid ferrite and for those involving proeutectoid carbide, because the two constituents have not been found to form in the same steel. Several steels were tried and rejected

Jan 1, 1947

By B. H. Caudle, A. B. Dyes, R. A. Erickson

The study of the influence of fluid mobilities on the sweepout pattern resulting from the injection of gas or water has been extended to cover the production period which follows breakthrough of the injected material. Mobility ratios over the range common in field operations (0.1 to 17) were studied for several pattern floods (five-spot, staggered, and direct line drive). The experimental data required for these studies were obtained by the use of the x-ray shadowgraph technique using miscible oil phases of different viscosities in porous plate mode1s of a reservoir element. From the shadowgraph pictures obtained before and after breakthrough of the injected fluid, flowing ratios at the producing well and cumulative volumes injected were calculated. The method for applying such data in predicting field behavior is illustrated for a water flood of a five-spot. For this case a range of mobility ratios of 0.5 to 5.0 results in: (I) nearly complete (95 to 100 per cent) sweepout pattern efficiencies at abandonment conditions, (2) production after breakthrough being responsible for as much as one-third of the total recovery at the lower mobility ratios, and (3) a twofold variation in the operating life of the reservoir. In determining the merits of a secondary recovery operation, the fraction of the reservoir which is ultimately to be swept by the injected fluid is of major importance. Because of its significance a large amount of research has been applied to the study of areal sweepout efficiency. Muskat, Wyckoff and Botset1,2 have presented the classic analysis of the pattern efficiency at breakthrough for several injection patterns in which the mobility of the fluids ahead of the injected phase front was equal to the mobility of the fluids behind the front. Aronofsky3 as extended this analysis of recovery at breakthrough through numerical computations and by the stepwise use of the potentiometric model to include the effect of different fluid mobilities ahead of and behind the invasion front on the line drive performance. Fay and Prats' have also employed numerical computations to show the influence of one other condition of fluid mobilities on the five spot flood. In a previous paper' a new method of attack on this problem which employed x-ray and porous plates was described. At that time experimental results were also presented which described the effect of fluid mobilities on the reservoir area contacted by the injected fluid at breakthrough for the five spot and direct line drive patterns. Most of the literature pertaining to sweepout pattern efficiency has emphasized the pattern which is obtained at breakthrough of the injected phase. The increase in the sweepout pattern which occurs after breakthrough

Jan 1, 1955

By Felix B. Shay

The Agua Fria mine is in eastern Honduras at Lat. 140" 06' N., Long. 86" 36' W. Danli, the seat of the local municipal government, is the nearest town. The property is approximately 44 miles east of Tegucigalpa, the terminus of a truck road from the Pacific coast. The mine lies at an altitude of 3300 ft. with surrounding elevations as high as 6000 feet. For 20 years the oxidized croppings of the Agua Fria vein had been worked intermittently when in 1927 an attempt was made to open the property. A shaft was sunk 300 ft. and considerable ore was blocked out, but before a mill could be installed financial difficulties arose and the mine reverted to the original owners. Erle Y. Halliburton, of Los Angeles, purchased the property in 1934. At that time a careful consideration of all factors involved showed that air transport was the only practical method of moving the equipment and machinery necessary to commence production. The other alternative was by muleback, which required sectionalizing all equipment to a maximum load of 200 lb., and during the rainy season this type of freighting was subject to serious delays. It was decided to purchase a trimotor Ford powered by three Pratt and Whitney Wasp B motors developing 400 hp. each. There were several reasons for the choice: (1) this type of plane was available at a reasonable price, owing to its replacement by faster models on most of the airlines in the United States; (2) the ship was capable of carrying a pay load of 3000 Ib. over the required distance; (3) since this airplane had been widely used there would be no difficulty in securing competent personnel or in purchasing spare parts. It was necessary to rebuild the plane for cargo servicc. The windows were removed and the fuselage was entirely covered. A hatch was cut in the top of the fuselage to receive heavy crane loads and pieces of freight that were too large or too long to go through the rear door. The seats were removed and the interior of the plane was lined with Duralumin sheets. A heavy-duty landing gear was installed and the floor was reinforced. The nearest site for an airport was two miles north of the mine. The necessary grading was done by a small track-type tractor with a wheeled grader, which was brought in overland. Six weeks was required for bring-

Jan 1, 1940

By Felix B. Shay

The Agua Fria mine is in eastern Honduras at Lat. 140" 06' N., Long. 86" 36' W. Danli, the seat of the local municipal government, is the nearest town. The property is approximately 44 miles east of Tegucigalpa, the terminus of a truck road from the Pacific coast. The mine lies at an altitude of 3300 ft. with surrounding elevations as high as 6000 feet. For 20 years the oxidized croppings of the Agua Fria vein had been worked intermittently when in 1927 an attempt was made to open the property. A shaft was sunk 300 ft. and considerable ore was blocked out, but before a mill could be installed financial difficulties arose and the mine reverted to the original owners. Erle Y. Halliburton, of Los Angeles, purchased the property in 1934. At that time a careful consideration of all factors involved showed that air transport was the only practical method of moving the equipment and machinery necessary to commence production. The other alternative was by muleback, which required sectionalizing all equipment to a maximum load of 200 lb., and during the rainy season this type of freighting was subject to serious delays. It was decided to purchase a trimotor Ford powered by three Pratt and Whitney Wasp B motors developing 400 hp. each. There were several reasons for the choice: (1) this type of plane was available at a reasonable price, owing to its replacement by faster models on most of the airlines in the United States; (2) the ship was capable of carrying a pay load of 3000 Ib. over the required distance; (3) since this airplane had been widely used there would be no difficulty in securing competent personnel or in purchasing spare parts. It was necessary to rebuild the plane for cargo servicc. The windows were removed and the fuselage was entirely covered. A hatch was cut in the top of the fuselage to receive heavy crane loads and pieces of freight that were too large or too long to go through the rear door. The seats were removed and the interior of the plane was lined with Duralumin sheets. A heavy-duty landing gear was installed and the floor was reinforced. The nearest site for an airport was two miles north of the mine. The necessary grading was done by a small track-type tractor with a wheeled grader, which was brought in overland. Six weeks was required for bring-

Jan 1, 1940

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Jan 1, 1938

The surface area that mining requires is a minuscule fraction of the total land mass of the United States, according to the US Bureau of Mines' latest report "Land Utilization and Reclamation in the Mining Industry, 1930-71." During the 42-year period from 1930 to 1971, the mining industry utilized 3.65 million acres-only 0.16% of a total 2.27 billion acres of land-and reclaimed 1.46 mil- lion acres, or 40% of what it used. Which leaves, as still unreclaimed, 0.096% of the nation's total land mass.

Jan 10, 1974

By I. W. Farmer

Case histories are introduced to illustrate how an understanding of the mechanics of deformation of mine structures associated with longwall layouts can be used to improve stability. Particular examples include: (a) deformations associated with longwall caving, (b) the effect of support pressure on roof deformation above a longwall face, (c) the effect of pack design on longwall access road closure, (d) the effect of rock deformation characteristics on floor heave.

Jan 1, 1982

By J. E. Campbell, G. D. Calkins, N. M. Ewbank, M. Pobereskin, A. Wesner

GRINDING for size reduction affects the economics of many processes and products. It is essential as the first step in many industrial processes and is also a finishing step for materials with properties depending on particle size, such as talc, cement, and silica sand. Intermediate and fine grinding are vital operations in the U. S. cement industry, which is producing more than 250 million bbl of cement per year.1 Wear of the grinding media is a large part of the grinding operation cost. Problems encountered in grinding cement are so complex that evaluation of efficiency and economy of grinding media is difficult.2 It has been especially difficult to evaluate the relative effectiveness of different types of balls because there are no good testing techniques.

Jan 12, 1957

By C. P. Parsons

CALIPER logging is a practice of measuring the variations in the diameter of the open hole in a well. This information is useful for many purposes, among which are: Determining the volumetric capacity of the portion of open hole to be cemented; the amount of gravel to be used for gravel-packing a well; the size and location of seat for a packer to be placed in a well; studying the effects of nitroglycerin shots; studying the effects of acidizing; studying the cause of drill-pipe failures; studying drilling technique; geological correlations. This is a new practice in oil fields and is eliminating considerable guesswork.

Jan 1, 1942

By ir. H. Eraly

At the Zolder mine a S/7 computer is used for two purposes : - to monitor production at the coal face - to monitor the distribution of mine cars. By using sensors attached to equipment at the coal face and at the loading points, the computer provides realtime information and also summarized reports, which help management to control production better. The computer will display this information to the control room, where two operators monitor all production events and the availability of the right numbers of mine cars at every production face. All benefits obtained from the system are described.

Jan 1, 1977

By Kenneth M. Ritchie

Mineral wool is a term applied to man-made fibers of silicate glass with useful properties resulting from their fibrous nature. In contrast with crystalline fibrous minerals such as asbestos, mineral wool fibers are amorphous, solid filaments produced by drawing from molten liquid and subsequent cooling. Chemically they are silicate glass with varying percentages of metallic oxides, especially those of aluminum, calcium, magnesium, iron, and in glass wool, sodium, potassium and boron. Other elements such as manganese, titanium, sulfur, etc., result from their presence in the raw materials used and are not purposely added. In the United States, mineral wool is a generic term and may be applied to rock, slag or glass wool. In Europe, glass silk and silicate cotton are products in the same category, but the term mineral wool is less commonly used. Current usage is to ignore the actual source and to differentiate products on a composition basis; thus rock and slag wools have about 35-45 pct of silica, while glass wool has 54 to 60 pct. Much mineral wool of slag origin is called "rock wool," and this practice is increasing, although wool made of slag from lead or copper refining is often referred to as "lead slag wool." Its greenish-gray to greenish-black dark color, due to 5-25 pct Fe (reported as FeO), distinguishes it from "white" wools made from iron, blast furnace slag containing only 1-2 pct FeO or Fe203. Most mineral wool is used for thermal insulation against heat and cold; sound absorption and isolation are probably the next most important uses. Both its thermal and acoustic values result primarily from the physical structure of the heterogeneous mixture of fibers and air which is the form in which the fibers are first obtained and handled. For this reason, within fairly wide limits, differences in chemical composition are relatively unimportant, and for most conventional applications all types are competitive in properties and value. Mineral wool intended for extreme conditions of high temperature, acid resistance and special purposes must have a chemical composition which will insure the desired properties. This may differ greatly from that of ordinary wools; for example one product approximately 98 pct Si02 and another consisting of 50 pct A1203 and 50 pct Si02 are produced and sold for high temperature service up to 2000°F or more. These are considerably more expensive to manufacture and their cost limits their use. Historical The manufacture of mineral wool consists fundamentally of a process which subjects molten material to shear and/or tensile forces that draw them into fibers. The liquids are cooled at a rate which solidifies them quickly. As a solid glass they are technically super-cooled liquids since they have no true melting point. The drawing out of glass into thin rods, filaments and tubes was known from very early times, and present day continuous production of glass filament for textiles was evolved gradually by adapting hand methods to automatic machinery. Rock and slag wool manufacture had a somewhat different development. Early explorers reported finding filamentous material

Jan 1, 1960

By John C. Calhoun, Frank T. Bethel

Glass beads have been surface treated with Dri-film to render them oil wet by n-octane to varying degrees, and capillary desaturation curves have been determined by the restored state method. The desaturation curves show a regularity of increasing displacement pressures as the oil wetness increases. This has been used to compute apparent contact angles between n-octane and water on glass. The family of desaturation curves also shows a regular crossover, such that the residual wetting liquid saturation values are in reverse order to the displacement pressures. A semi-logarithmic variation is shown between the apparent contact angle and the residual saturation. The desaturation data are interpreted to mean that the wetting liquid ceases to be a continuous phase within individual pores before the capillary pressure can be raised sufficiently to force out the wetting phase completely. The saturation of wetting liquid at which this break in liquid continuity occurs is higher as the oil wetness decreases. INTRODUCTION The petroleum industry has for some time been using measurements of capillary pressures on porous media for research correlations and engineering calculations. It has been generally recognized that the capillary desaturation curve reflects the character and arrangement of the pores within the media and the distribution of fluids within the pores. Methods have been proposed for computing pore size distributions, tortuosity factors. and relative permeabilities from capillary desaturation data.' There is little doubt that the interactions between porous rocks and their contained fluids resulting from surface forces play a dominant role in determining the magnitude and direction of capillary pressure measurements. There have been attempts to introduce as variables two quantities — inter-facial tension and contact angle — generally used to char- acterize surface forces, but in spile of the wide interest in these quantities as important variables, few definite conclusions have been drawn concerning their qualitative or quantitative significance. INTERFACIAL TENSION The interfacial tension appears in a capillary pressure function given by Leverett for correlating capillary desaturation type curves. Use of the interfacial tension in this function seems to be justified by other experiments reported. Apparently, interfacial tensions have little bearing on wetting phase residual by desaturation. CONTACT ANGLE The contact angle was utilized as a variable by Bartell and co-workers"." in tests on displacement pressures, later recognized as the initial point of capillary desaturation. Although Leverett did not include contact angle in his original formulation of the capillary pressure function, later workers suggested its addition. Few reports are available to show variation of residual liquid with contact angle as a result of capillary desaturation.' The problems attendant to measuring contact angle within a porous medium are great. As a consequence of the lack of a concrete approach to a measurement. the workers in this area of research have adopted the general expression of "wettability" to indicate the relative position of two liquids saturating a porous body. It has been shown that gross measurements on porous systems, including capillary desatura-tions, are sensitive to wettability. Attempts at giving a scale to wettability in terms of contact angle through capillary desaturation curves have been made and these apparently are steps in the right direction. In these attempts presence of many other variables precludes attainment of exactness. Also, as a result of other variables, it has been impossible to correlate changes in apparent contact angle with changes in other physical measurements of the systems in question. The present work is an attempt to eliminate as many variables as possible in measuring capillary desaturations resulting from changes in contact angle within a porous medium.

Jan 1, 1953

By W. A. Anderson, F. N. Rhines, W. A. Johnson

THE rate of the high-temperature oxidation of pure copper has been measured repeatedly by numerous investigators. It appears to be generally agreed: (I) that at constant temperature, after the initial stages of oxidation have been passed and the scale has attained a substantial depth, the film thickness increases in proportion to the square root of the time of oxidation; and (2) that for any given period of oxidation the logarithm of the square of the film thickness is proportional to the reciprocal of the absolute temperature of oxidation.' These relationships are explained upon the basis that the rate of diffusion of copper to the external surface of the film is the controlling factor in establishing the rate of growth. Extensive studies have been devoted also to the mechanism and rates of the early stages of oxidation. There is thus available a reasonably well established theory of the oxidation of pure copper upon which to construct an explanation of the more complex oxidation of copper alloys. Few general principles have as yet emerged from the chaos of observations that have been reported in the field of the oxidation of alloys.2 It is evident, however, that the copper alloys may be divided into two main groups, whose oxidation characteristics are distinguish able. The first group, composed of the alloys with the noble metals, forms substantially pure copper oxide scales; the alloying element is concentrated within the residual metal, and sometimes particles of almost pure noble metal are found in the scales completely surrounded by copper oxide. In the second group, composed of the alloys of copper with the baser metals, the alloying element appears as an oxide in the scale, often in greater concentration than in the alloy itself and sometimes to the exclusion of copper oxide. The oxide scales of the latter class have been found to be made up of one, two, and sometimes more distinguishable layers of which the innermost is often metallic in character, composed of particles of the oxide of the alloying element embedded in essentially pure copper and known as the subscale or zone of internal oxidation. The need for a thorough quantitative study of these modes of oxidation is evident. Since it is apparent that several mechanisms must be cooperating to produce the complex oxide scales found on copper alloys, the analysis of the process into its several simple operations should prove instructive. Fortunately, it is possible experimentally to produce internal oxidation in the absence of an external scale; this permits the isolation and intensive study of one of the steps in the oxidation process. In the present research the rates of internal oxidation of an extensive series of dilute solid solution alloys of copper have been measured and a theory has been developed to predict the observed

Jan 1, 1941

By A. S. Appleton

The diffusion of carbon in Fe-Co-C austenites was studied as a function of cobalt concentration up to 12 at. pet, using an autoradiographic technique. The diffusion coefficient was found to initially decrease and then increase with increasing cobalt concentration, the trends being more marked the higher the temperature of diffusion. These effects were paralleled by variations in the activation energy and the constant for diffusion which, however, were found to be dependent also on the carbon content. The results are compared with the previously available data and their significance is discussed in terms of the kinetics of solid-state reactions in this systern. THE influence of cobalt on the diffusivity of carbon in austenite was first studied by Smoluchowski,' his data being that most commonly cited in works

Jan 1, 1964