Preliminary study of a furnace for an x-ray tomographic cabinet

In this communication some preliminary results are outlined, concerning the design of a small furnace for in situ testing by X-ray computed microtomography. The furnace was conceived to carry out wettability experiments for sessile droplets of molten metal alloys, with a few millimeters diameter, on a thin ceramic substrate, at temperatures close to 700°C inside a commercial tomographic setup. X-ray scanning of the molten droplet is expected to allow for a highly accurate, fully three-dimensional reconstruction of the droplet profile and its contact angle, useful for the assessment of metal-ceramic joints by brazing. The design of the novel equipment required to face several problems, mostly related to the geometric constraints due to the very limited cabinet space, for which both analytical and numerical tools were utilized.