ON THE MEASUREMENTS OF THERMOPHYSICAL PROPERTIES DURING PLANAR FRONT SOLIDIFICATION OF AN SN-BI ALLOY IN MICROGRAVITY - RESULTS OF THE MEPHISTO-USMPI EXPERIMENTS

We propose in this paper a procedure to deduce the values of some impo rtant thermophysical parameters, such as the solute diffusion and part ition coefficients, from the analysis of solidification experiments. T he data considered here were obtained during the first microgravity fl ight of the Mephisto experiment, as our procedure can only be applied when mass transport is purely diffusive. This is often impossible on e arth due to unavoidable convective movements, but can be achieved in s pace. The numerical modelling of the initial solute transient using th e deduced values was found to be in good agreement with the experiment al results. Copyright (C) 1996 Acta Metallurgica Inc.