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Ministry of Education and Science of Russia 23 December 2025 18:50
The staff of the Belgorod State Technological University (BSTU) named after V.G. Shukhov has developed a laboratory facility for predicting how refractory materials will behave in industrial furnaces. A patent of the Russian Federation has been obtained for the utility model.
There is a serious problem in metallurgy and glassmaking — the rapid and unpredictable wear of the lining (inner lining) of industrial furnaces. Existing measurement methods are inaccurate and do not reliably predict the durability of materials. The new installation solves this problem by providing accurate forecast data, which avoids unscheduled production shutdowns and expensive repairs.
The high-precision laboratory furnace created by the developers is equipped with a video surveillance system and combined with a computer system. Its key task is to measure the wetting edge angle, which makes it possible to predict with unprecedented accuracy how liquid metal, slag or glass will interact with the surface of a refractory material at extremely high temperatures.
“Imagine that you are dripping water on different surfaces. In a greasy frying pan, it gathers into a ball, and spreads on clean glass. The angle that the drop forms at the surface is the wetting edge angle. Our installation does the same thing, but with materials heated to the state of lava. We are looking at whether this “liquid lava” will stick and corrode the refractory brick or roll off it like a drop from a lotus leaf,” explained Sergey Zaitsev, one of the authors of the development, a junior researcher at the Department of Materials Science and Technology of the BSTU named after V.G. Shukhov.
“Our key advantage is the creation of a stable temperature field and the use of a modern video surveillance system with light filters. This allows us to obtain data that was previously impossible to achieve,” the scientist noted.
The device exists as a functional prototype — it has been assembled, tested and confirmed its operability. In the near future, it is planned to turn the laboratory prototype into a commercial product, automate it, simplify the measurement and data analysis process, and enter the industrial market with a ready-made solution for scientific and production laboratories.
According to the developers, the device will be useful for scientific institutes and manufacturers for the development and testing of refractories, as well as for metallurgical and glass factories to select the most resistant materials, which can increase the reliability of industrial furnaces and reduce the cost of their repair and downtime.
The work was carried out with the financial support of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation as part of the implementation of the state assignment.
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