On the measurements of thermophysical properties during planar front solidification of an Sn-Bi alloy in microgravity: Results of the Mephisto-USMP1 experiments

We propose in this paper a procedure to deduce the values of some important thermophysical parameters, such as the solute diffusion and partition coefficients, from the analysis of solidification experiments. The data considered here were obtained during the first microgravity flight of the Mephisto experiment, as our procedure can only be applied when mass transport is purely diffusive. This is often impossible on earth due to unavoidable convective movements, but can be achieved in space. The numerical modelling of the initial solute transient using the deduced values was found to be in good agreement with the experimental results.