Thermal Diffusivity and Thermal Conductivity of Five Different Steel Alloys in the Solid and Liquid Phases

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The need for characterization of thermophysical properties of steel and nickel-based alloys was addressed in the FFG-Bridge Project 810999 in cooperation with a partner from industry, Bohler Edelstahl GmbH & Co KG. To optimize numerical simulations of production processes, such as remelting or plastic deformation, additional, and more accurate data were necessary for the alloys under investigation. With a fast ohmic pulse heating circuit system, the temperature-dependent specific electrical resistivity, density, and specific heat capacity for a set of five high alloyed steels were measured. Hence, using the Wiedemann–Franz law with a Lorenz number of $$L =2.45\times 10^{-8}\,\hbox {V}^{2}{\cdot }\hbox {K}^{-2}$$ , the thermal diffusivity and thermal conductivity could be calculated for the solid and liquid phases up to temperatures of 2500 K. This experimental approach is limited by the following requirements for the specimens: they have to be electrically conducting, the melting point has to be high enough for the implemented pyrometric temperature measurement, and one has to be able to draw wires of the material. The latter restriction is technologically challenging with some of the materials being very brittle. For all samples, electrical and temperature signals are recorded and a fast shadowgraph method is used to measure the volume expansion. For each material under investigation, a set of data including the chemical composition, the density at room temperature, solidus and liquidus temperatures, and the change of enthalpy, resistivity, density, thermal conductivity, and thermal diffusivity as a function of temperature is reported.