On the Critical Point of Tungsten

Abstract

Experimental results of exploding tungsten wire experiments with heating rates of 1010 to 1011 K⋅s−1 are interpreted using a one-dimensional hydrodynamic model. The vaporization dynamics under these conditions are discussed. It is shown that for the wires used the superheating of the liquid phase is small and vaporization starts close to the binodal line of the phase diagram. Due to inertia, a volume vaporization takes place in a thin surface layer, while in the bulk of the column formed by the exploding wire a pressure of the order of 10 kbar is maintained. Sufficiently uniform density and temperature distributions are formed in the liquid core surrounded by the two-phase layer. This behavior of vaporizing wires was used to obtain the thermal expansion coefficient of liquid tungsten along with its critical point parameters.