Metallurgy and metallurgical engineering series. Phase diagrams in metallurgy, their development and application / Серия "Металлургия и металлургический инжиниринг". Фазовые диаграммы в металлургии, их разработка и применение

Phase diagrams mean more to the metallurgist than mere graphical records of the physical states of matter. They provide a medium of expression and thought that simplifies and makes intelligible the otherwise bewildering pattern of change that takes place as elemental substances are mixed one with another and are heated or cooled, compressed or expanded. They illumine relationships that assist us in our endeavor to exercise control over the behavior of matter. These are no accidental by-products of a system devised primarily for the recording of physical data. They exist because the basic features of construction of all phase diagrams are dictated by a single natural law, the phase rule of J. Willard Gibbs, which relates the physical state of a mixture with the number of substances of which it is composed and with the environmental conditions imposed upon it. <...>