The Engineering Body Scanner Concept

Abstract

Residual stress measurements by neutron and synchrotron diffraction have made enormous advances in the last decade. With this has come a desire to examine more demanding component geometries leading to prolonged set-up times and complex scan and reorientation procedures. The Engineering Body Scanner (EBS) project has targeted this problem not only as an issue of physical measurement set-up but also the subsequent need for data storage and co-visualisation. Using a coordinate measurement machine to digitise key features of the sample, measurement plans may be made in advance of the visit to international facilities. This approach also permits the measurements taken at different locations in the sample, perhaps on different instruments, to be located in a single co-ordinate frame of reference — that of the sample. In terms of co-visualisation software, EBS has increased the ease and range of analysis, opening up the possibility of merging different datasets collected from a range of instruments.