Measurement of the Dependence of the Effective Electrical Conductivity of Liquid Metals with Solid Particles on the Volume Fraction of an Impurity

Abstract—A method has been proposed and implemented for measuring the effective electrical conductivity (EC) of a limited volume of a metal melt with an admixture of solid well-conducting particles depending on the volume fraction of an impurity in the range from zero to seven percent. The results are compared to the well-known theoretical dependences for effective EC. None of the considered models is shown to provide even qualitative agreement with experiment. On the experimental curve, several sections can be distinguished with different dependences of EC on the volume fraction of an impurity. The experimental data are approximated by analytical functions, which make it possible to use the results obtained for numerical modeling of MHD processes.