Report on a testing result of refractories

It is no exaggeration to say that the remarkable development of the Japanes e steel industry in the 20th century has been brought about by technologica l advances in the field of refractories. We may pinpoint two important reas ons for the advances in refractory technologies, One is that ceramists in J apan have been producing new refractories based on the evaluation of refrac tory performance in actual use, together with engineers in the steel indust ry, and the other is that ceramists in Japan have devoted much effort to th e quality control of refractories. This study was the starting point of the present success of the Japanese refractory industry. The authors collected information on 39 types of refractories from domestic and foreign companie s, and systematically investigated their chemical compositions, physical pr operties, refractoriness and slag resistance. It is worth mentioning that t his paper contained the first proposal in the world for a testing method of slag resistance by contacting slag at high temperatures. In those days, re fractories were tested solely by heating at high temperatures, and therefor e the testing method proposed in this paper was ground-breaking. Moreover, it is clear that the authors overacame the difficulty in measuring temperat ures accurately during the test whenever we see the word "Shinetsu" in the paper. Therefore, we should appreciated once again the significant contribu tion of these authors towards the development of ceramic science and techno logy.