XRISE-M: X-radiography facility for solidification and diffusion studies of alloys aboard sounding rockets

A compact fully protected microfocus X-radiography facility (XRISE-M) is presented for the study of microstructure evolution during the solidification of thin liquid alloy samples and chemical diffusion in liquid binary alloys in situ and in real-time aboard a sounding rocket. XRISE-M presently enables the simultaneous processing of either two near-isothermal solidification furnaces or a combination of a linear-shear cell diffusion furnace and a near-isothermal solidification furnace. For optimal detector calibration shortly before flight, the furnaces can be rotated around the central beam axis and calibration images can be recorded. The facility allows preheating the samples into the liquid state prior to lift-off without leakage during the ascent phase at accelerations of up to 27 g. Macrosegregation on remelting of thin metal samples for microstructure evolution investigations is prevented by an inclinable furnace metric. The use of ion-getter pumps for vacuum generation enables us to exploit the entire available time of reduced gravity for image recording and data acquisition. With the device and currently available sample environments, microstructure formation upon solidification and chemical diffusion under purely diffusive conditions in alloys can be investigated. The facility can be used equally for other investigations such as granular matter dynamics or metal foaming, provided that suitable experiment inserts are developed in the future.