Dipartimento di Chimica

Descrizione del progetto

Breakthrough experiments in the field of materials science and fluid physics have recently been performed on the International Space Station ISS enabling high-precision measurements of various thermophysical properties of freely suspended metallic liquid drops in the stable und undercooled liquid state. By stimulating strong magnetic fields at various time scales A.C. calorimetry, liquid surface excitations and other techniques can be used to measure thermodynamic properties (specific heat, thermal conductivity, emissivity), surface (surface tension) and kinetic properties (viscosity) with a precision not attainable on earth. The exact knowledge of these properties is crucial in optimizing casting and solidification processes for engineering components fabricated on earth. While the ground-based containerless levitation techniques (ESL, EML) in general have serious limitations for precise thermophysical property measurements, the joint CMS– ESA research project will expand such measurements further to low-earth orbit and make high-precision measurements feasible for a new class of materials, namely bulk metallic glasses and its composites which exhibit very low evaporation rates in their liquid state. These investigations shall be performed aboard the International Space Station ISS using MSL-EML - and at a later stage - aboard the Chinese Space Station CSS. The contribution of ESA is the EML facility for containerless processing of electrically conducting samples in a wide temperature range.
The contribution of CMSA will be the systematic development and selection of alloy systems and investigations in space with ground support to explore the relationship between the thermophysical properties and temperature, alloy compositions, atomic structure and glass forming ability.