Solidification furnace for microgravity experiments on sounding rockets

Abstract

The Brazilian Microgravity Program is mainly based on experiments carried out on sounding rockets. Up to present days, three missions carrying a total of experiments were made. n all ights, a fast solidi cation furnace, capable of producing temperatures up to 900º C, was used to process metal and semiconductor alloys in microgravity environment. This paper has described the furnace and the solidi cation experiment made during the last parabolic ight, called Maracati Mission, which has occurred in ecember, 0 0.

Development and Construction of a Centrifuge for Materials Processing in High Accelerations

“…In the rotation simulations, the furnace system developed by An et al was fixed on the same platform used during the VSB-30 flight, and was fixed in an aluminum arm of 0.5 m in the centrifuge base, Figure 4. In this configuration the centrifuge generate rotations conditions up to 180 RPM (maximum rotation of 1000 RPM) during the solidification process, this is the rotation the VSB-30 in the upward flight; all experiments parameters will be the same as used during Maracati II Mission [16][17][18].…”

“…This experiment aims to investigate if the rotations during the upward flight of the VSB-30 sounding rocket (180 RPM) influenced the solidification process of the eutectic alloys tested during the flight the Maracati II Mission [15][16][17][18], Figure 4. Equipment for the simulation of rotations.…”

The Influence of High Gravity in PbSn Eutectic Alloy

“…The study of non-equilibrium solidification fundamentals is important to understand metastable phases [2]. The formation of dendritic structures in PbSn alloy is related to the presence of sedimentation and convective flow during solidification, and the size of these structures is connected to the solidification time [3].…”