Research
Acid polishing of lead glass
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* Corresponding author: Stephen BG O’Brien stephen.obrien@ul.ie
MACSI, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
Journal of Mathematics in Industry 2011, 1:1 doi:10.1186/2190-5983-1-1
Published: 3 June 2011Abstract
Purpose
The polishing of cut lead glass crystal is effected through the dowsing of the glass in a mixture of two separate acids, which between them etch the surface and as a result cause it to be become smooth. In order to characterise the resultant polishing the rate of surface etching must be known, but when this involves multicomponent surface reactions it becomes unclear what this rate actually is.
Methods
We develop a differential equation based discrete model to determine the effective etching rate by means of an atomic scale model of the etching process.
Results
We calculate the etching rate numerically and provide an approximate asymptotic estimate.
Conclusions
The natural extension of this work would be to develop a continuum advection-diffusion model.
