Neutron Diffraction for Non-Destructive Strain/Stress Measurements in Industrial Devices

Abstract

High resolution neutron diffraction is becoming widely used as a non-destructive tool to investigate three-dimensional stress fields in polycrystalline metals and ceramics. Lattice strains can be derived from Bragg peak positions measured with an accuracy better than 1 : 10⁴. Both crystal and time-of-flight diffractometry are used to perform the measurements, as is demonstrated by examples. New instrumental developments like the European PREMIS project at ISIS, England, the Fourier correlation spectrometer FSS at Geesthacht, Germany and the energy-dispersive Neutron Transmission Stroboscope at LANSCE, United States, are introduced. Recent results on industrial devices are presented.