Title : Electromagnetic levitation: environment and a tool for the measurement of the properties of liquid metals.
Contact : Joel Sommeria
Abstract : Electromagnetic levitation (EML), allows one to hold in space an electrically conductive sample both in its solid and liquid state, without having any contact with it and thus preventing its contamination. EML is widely applied in material science and one of these applications is the measurement of physical properties of liquid metals. Using thermal measurements and visualization of the shape of the liquid sample one can extract data on surface tension and viscosity of the liquid, heat capacity and thermal conductivity of the sample, etc. Data extraction would be straightforward if the electromagnetic force that provides levitation of the sample had not generate convective flow in the sample. For this reason, a measurement facility TEMPUS has been constructed at the International Space Station to take advantage of microgravity which allows one to diminish the electromagnetic forces and, presumably, avoid convection in the sample. Attempts of numerical modeling aimed to reproduce levitation and the measurement procedure are made repeatedly but fully coupling modeling remains challenging. In the work the measurements procedures and one of the approaches for the modeling are presented, obtained results are compared with the expected analytical solution.
