All metallic materials are prepared from the liquid state as their parent phase. Solidification is therefore one of the most important phase transformation in daily human life. Solidification is the transition from liquid to solid state of matter. The conditions under which material is transformed determines the physical and chemical properties of the as-solidified body. The processes involved, like nucleation and crystal growth, are governed by heat and mass transport.
Convection and undercooling provide additional processing parameters to tune the solidification process and to control solid material performance from the very beginning of the production chain.
To develop a predictive capability for efficient materials production the processes involved in solidification have to be understood in detail.
This book provides a comprehensive overview of the solidification of metallic melts processed and undercooled in a containerless manner
by drop tube, electromagnetic and electrostatic levitation, and experiments in reduced gravity.
The experiments are accompanied by model calculations on the influence of thermodynamic and hydrodynamic conditions that control
selection of nucleation mechanisms and modify crystal growth development throughout the solidification process.


Dieter Herlach is leader of the group 'Undercooling of Materials' and Senior Scientist at the Institute of Materials Physics in Space of the
German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne. He is full professor of physics at the Ruhr-University Bochum. Dieter Herlach has authored more than 300 scientific publications in refereed journals and organized sixteen conferences and symposia. He is author and editor of six books and member of the advisory board of Advanced Engineering Materials (Wiley-VCH). He was member of the advisory board of directors of the German Physical Society and deputy chairman of the German Society of Materials Science and Engineering. Two priority programs of the
German Research Foundation (DFG) and several European projects of the European Space Agency and the European Commission were coordinated by him. He was lead scientist for NASA Spacelab missions IML2 and MSL1 and granted as honorary professor of four Chinese Universities and Research Centers.

Douglas M. Matson is Vice Chairman and Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Tufts University, Medford MA, USA. He is an internationally recognized expert with over fifty peer reviewed articles in thermal manufacturing, machine design, materials processing, solidification research, and microgravity experimentation. He has organized five symposium, is the former president of the North Alabama Chapter of the American Society for Materials (ASM) and received an Erskine Fellowship at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. He has served as lead scientist for the MSL-1 Spacelab mission and currently is the NASA facility scientist for the MSL-EML project aboard the International Space Station.