Materials Characterization by Diffraction Techniques. X-rays, Neutrons, Synchrotron Radiation and EBSD: A Critical Assessment of their Capabilities and Relative Advantages.

R. BOLMARO; M. AVALOS; H. BROKMEIER

Darmstadt

Congreso; Materials Science and Engineering Congress 2018; 2018

FEMS - TMS

Largeneutron and synchrotron radiation facilities have been available in Germany formany years. Neutron source availability is much older and more recently thebright synchrotron sources have been developed and are available for theinternational scientific community. Both kinds of sources have common as wellas differential characteristics allowing to obtain complementary results. Thecurrent work describes a series of experiments and results obtained in a longhistory of collaboration between   theClausthal Technical University, Germany, and Rosario National University,Argentina, starting in 1996. The main neutron source was the alreadydecommissioned Geesthacht Nuclear Reactor. Such reactor provided severalneutron lines from which the main results for the collaboration came fromTex-2, a goniometer designed mainly for texture determinations. The superb penetrationof neutrons allowed the inspection of large samples with averaging capabilitiesfar superior to laboratory x-ray machines. Metals, rocks and compositematerials were investigated and resulted in several publications combiningexperiments and simulations.Lateron the synchrotron source at DESY, Petra III, provided the opportunity ofstarting in-situ texture and microstructure analysis of deformed materials.Highly collimated and penetrating beams give the opportunity to inspect withhigh accuracy materials during tensile tests as well as under heat treatment.Bothsources provided results that, compared with laboratory x-ray results and,recently, EBSD experiments and incorporating computer modelling were quiteprofitable for materials science research in metals, alloys, composites, rocks,etc.A few case studies, investigated along more than 20 years willshow the capabilities of the different techniques for evaluating textures,microstructures and their interrelationship. Correlation between the methodswill be shown, including the application of models and simulations to help onthe understanding of the results.