III --> IV --> II  Transition

The animation shows a series of p-T diagrams of the old good van der Waals equation of state for b1/b2 = 7/13, a11/a22 = 3/2, and k in the range [1,1.3] (a12 = k sqrt(a11a22)).
The animation starts with a diagram of type III. Then, a tricritical point appears on a critical line and splits into a pair of critical end-points connected by a short segment of a three-phase line; this is called type IV behavior (more exactly, IV*). For even larger values of k, two critical end-points merge (in the so called double critical end-point) and disappear. The final type is called II.

II->IV->III transition (94kB) key

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