At present the quality control of refractories both by producers and users is carried out by selective testing of a statistically representative sample from a batch of goods. The main parameters of the goods (compressive strength, bending strength, open porosity, etc.) are determined by destructive methods. These are suitable for direct determination of the working properties, and the risk of passing defective articles for use is subject to the laws of statistics [i].However, several factors limit the use of the selective destructive method. Firstly, the mounting cost of the damaged goods means unacceptable expenditure on reliable control at the production site. Secondly, the cost of repairs during accidental breakdown of the furnaces through using defective refractories produces the problem of 100% control (e.g., tests on 7000 tiles for the high-temperature casing of the Space Shuttle craft [2]). Finally, for a whole range of articles, the determination of mechanical strength, porosity and other properties by the direct method meets with serious difficulties. These articles, for example, include large blocks, complex shapes (drilled and slotted items, cylinders), very small items (tubes, sleeves, pins, etc.)As a result of all this, in certifying products in the producer-factory and at the user site preference is given to the use of nondestructive, physical methods of testing, and these are already being used in industry. These methods are usually based on analyzing the electromagnetic or sonic oscillations passing through the refractories.Electromagnetic oscillations have found use in the x-ray and radio-wave methods of testing. Soft x-ray beams (i0 nm) provide a clear picture of the internal structure of articles of low density, and thin components with slight differences in density. Hard x-ray beams (0.001 nm) reveal the internal structure of dense and very large items. Typically, the x-ray method has a resolving capacity of about 2% of the thickness of the article.At the Novomoskovsk Refractories Factory the quality of articles used for continuous casting machines (immersion nozzles, stopper blocks, tubes for protecting the metal jet against oxidation) is checked by the x-ray method. This reveals the presence of extraneous inclusions, the magnitude of the difference in thickness of the walls of an item, the degree of distribution of graphite additions, internal defects (cracks, hairline cracks, etc.). Other possibilities of the method include showing up such internal defects as density differences and internal cavities [3].The radio-wave method is based on measuring the amplitude and phase of superhigh-frequency radiation passing through the article. It is shown that the displacement of the standing wave minimum is where %, %B are the wavelengths in the article and the waveguide respectively; r is the dielectric permeability; s is the thickness of the specimen.The radiowave method can be used for checking various properties of refractories* and primarily the porosity. For gate plates the change in the open ...