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EML: Electromagnetic Levitator Melting Furnace



The EML is a furnace that permits melting metal alloys in microgravity without a container. In other words: samples measuring six to eight millimetres in diameter float freely in it, suspended only by an electromagnetic field. To avoid contamination, the chemically aggressive melts are surrounded either by ultra-high vacuum or super-clean inert gas. The EML measures the melts’ temperature-dependent properties, such as viscosity, surface tension, specific heat, thermal expansion, and electric conductivity. These measurements are considerably more exact than they are in laboratories on the ground because there are no gravity-dependent forces to interfere in space. The precision of the EML data helps to improve computer models of industrial casting processes for high-tech materials. EML uses high-speed cameras to document the early phases of microstructure formation during the rapid solidification of melts from a deeply undercooled state. This will serve to decode certain physical mechanisms that permit novel, tailored materials to be produced. There are plans to install a total of six changeable EML chambers. The first of these contains 18 alloy samples, several of which were be melted during Alexander Gerst’s mission. So far, a total of 14 scientific experiments have been selected for the EML, 13 of them coordinated by German scientists.


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