Estimation of the heat of fusion of a eutectic mixture from phase diagram data

Abstract

Simple methods are presented for the estimation of the heat of fusion of a eutectic mixture from the entropy of formation of constituent phases with the aid of data obtainable from the binary phase diagrams. The suggested methods do not require any thermodynamic information concerning the terminal solid solutions if any one of them has negligible solid solubility. In such cases the present methods also do not require thermodynamic information concerning the liquid phase. The procedures are tested with respect to a number of eutectic systems based on simple metals and intermetallic compounds. Results obtained are in excellent agreement with values obtained from direct experiments.