Materials Engineering - EH2

The Materials Engineering station on ID15A focuses on engineering materials methods and instrumentation. The main techniques are angular-dispersive and energy-dispersive diffraction. The W76 compact wiggler source provides intense X-ray beams up to several hundred keV. In this station non-destructive diffraction techniques may be used to investigate materials properties on multiple length and time scales.

Key points

• Energy range: 20 < E < 280 keV (monochromatic) or up to ca. 500 keV (white beam)
• Beam sizes from 30 µm to 8 mm

Techniques

• Angular dispersive diffraction
• Energy dispersive diffraction
• X-ray imaging/ fast tomography

Overview

This field has evolved beyond routine 3D strain mapping and specifically it makes use of the advantages evolving from high-energy X rays in the range 100 - 500 keV. These X-rays can penetrate through 70 mm of steel, allowing ‘real’ components to be investigated. Research topics include dynamics in thermo-mechanical loading processes on the sub-second time scale and ‘single-shot’ experiments with higher spatial resolution when combined with special collimating slits.