The Applicability of size-factor and Electron Concent-ration Concepts to Alloying behaviour of Copper

The theory of alloy structures deals with many empi-rical correlations involving valencies, size factors etc. and these were advanced by Hume-Rothery and his collab-orators from a study of alloys of simple metals like copper, silver and gold. Through these correlations have been of much use to the practising metallurgist, no clear meaning can yet be seen in these correlations. Attempts have however been made to put them on a quantitative basis but not with much success. This is probably due to the fact that some of the assumptions on which quanti-tative derivations of the correlations have been made
are incorrect besides some of them being inadequate. In addition some, recent experimental findings, have begun to question some of the basic assumptions on, which alloy theory is based. In view of these developments it would be advantageous to reexamine the validity of the principles of alloy theory to assess their applicability to the alloying behaviour of metals. In this paper such an exami-nation is carried out in relation to copper.