I have just been asked by an experienced FactSage user how to add “Balance” when specifying an alloy composition in FactSage. This is one of the features that is very useful but unkown to many, so we should explain it better! This is why we started the GTT-blog anyway…
So, let’s consider the case when you want to input the composition of the stainless steel 304 (1.4301). This most popular stainless steel contains 18 wt.% Cr, 10 wt.% Ni and below 0.08 wt.% C. How do you input this composition in FactSage? Well, the first elements can be treated quite easily:
Now you can of course take out the pocket calculator and calculate 100-18-10-0.03. Naturally, This becomes more and more inconvenient if the number of elements increases. To make your life easier, you can specify the balance content as “?100”:
and FactSage automatically calculates the balance to 100 g:
By the way: Did you know that you can also specify the unit of the mass for each species individually? You can add e.g. a gas mixture that you want to specify by molar ratio (which roughly equals the partial pressure ratio) to the above steel as follows:
Do you have a question on FactSage features? Do not hesitate to contact us!