Thermodynamic assessment of Cr-Nb-C and Mn-Nb-C systems

In the present work, an attempt to provide thermodynamic descriptions for the Cr-Nb-C and Mn-Nb-C systems was made. Various descriptions for most of the binary systems had been already available, so a selection between parameters sets was made. An additional partial reassessment was needed for the Cr-C system for the better correspondence with recent experimental data for the liquidus. To describe solubility of Nb in manganese and chromium carbides enthalpies of formation for hypothetical end members were calculated using ab initio methods. The thermodynamic descriptions of ternary systems were extrapolated from corresponding binary systems and optimized taking into account existing experimental data for the ternary systems. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.