Abstract
A glass-ceramics based on blast-furnace slag, with some additives to the theoretical composition in order to control properties of mother glass and the heat treatment conditions, has been investigated. The raw materials in this study were blast-furnace slag, serpentine, feldspar and quartz as mother glass ingredients. Titanium dioxide and chromite were used as the nucleating agents. Batch compositions of the prepared glasses and ceraming conditions were found by trial and error method. The optimum conditions were confirmed by analyzing several measured physical properties such as density change during heat treatment, microhardness of slag-ceramics prepared, viscosity change of glass at heat treatment temperatures, nucleation density change, dilatometric properties, differential thermal analysis, identification of the grown crystal and crystal sizes. The batch composition feasible to prepare slag-ceramics was 40% of blast-furnace slag, 25% of serpentine, 18% of feldspar and 17% of silica sand. Three percent titanium dioxide and 1% chromite of the mother glass were added as nucleating agents. The ceraming conditions under which the slag-ceramics having considerably good properties can be developed found as: "The glass was heated at 75$0^{\circ}C$ for 2 hours for nucleation, and the temperature was raised up to 1, 00$0^{\circ}C$ with a rate of 0.75$^{\circ}C$/min for crystal growth.owth.