ABSTRACT
Structural macrokinetics is a new scientific field, the basics of which were laid out by Academician A.G. Merzhanov and his school by the end of the 1980’s [1, 2]. The origin of this branch of material science was determined by research in the field of combustion synthesis (CS or SHS) of materials. The development of CS proceeds in the direction from the synthesis of powders with subsequent processing for production of the final materials and net-shape articles in a single step by using the combustion process. The transition to direct synthesis of materials and articles in the combustion wave greatly increases the requirements for methods of controlling the structure of products, which determine the properties of the materials. Short reaction times and extreme temperature conditions, which take place in the combustion wave, make this task very difficult. The solution should be sought in fundamental studies of patterns and mechanisms for the product’s structure formation in the SHS waves. This task merges with the problem of the investigation of the microstructure of the combustion wave, which is one of the fundamental aspects in the combustion theory. Indeed, on the one hand, the propagation of the combustion wave in a heterogeneous environment leads to the destruction of the original structure and the formation of a new structure of the media; on the other hand, these structural changes have a decisive influence on the propagation mechanism of the reaction front. Thus, the development of SHS has led to the necessity
of a joint investigation into the mechanisms of combustion and structure formation processes in the single scientific field, so-called structural macrokinetics (SMK). This field combines kinetics of chemical reactions, the theory of heat and mass transfer, and kinetics of structural transformations in the heterogeneous media. Thus, the task of structural macrokinetics is the study of the evolution of the structure of the medium during chemical transformations, taking into account the processes of heat and mass transfer. Obviously the objects for SMK studies may not only be the combustion-based processes, however, historically, the SHS with its extremely high temperatures, temperature gradients, rates of physical-chemical and structural transformations has provided the experimental basis for the development of this new research direction.
