Operando neutron diffraction reveals mechanisms for controlled strain evolution in 3D printing.

Residual stresses affect the performance and reliability of most manufactured goods and are prevalent in casting, welding, and additive manufacturing (AM, 3D printing). Residual stresses are associated with plastic strain gradients accrued due to transient thermal stress. Complex thermal conditions in AM produce similarly complex residual stress patterns. However, measuring real-time effects of processing on stress evolution is not possible with conventional techniques. Here we use operando neutron diffraction to characterize transient phase transformations and lattice strain evolution during AM of a low-temperature transformation steel. Combining diffraction, infrared and simulation data reveals that elastic and plastic strain distributions are controlled by motion of the face-centered cubic and body-centered cubic phase boundary. Our results provide a new pathway to design residual stress states and property distributions within additively manufactured components. These findings will enable control of residual stress distributions for advantages such as improved fatigue life or resistance to stress-corrosion cracking.

The high intensity diffractometer for residual stress analysis (HIDRA), a third generation residual stress mapping neutron diffractometer at the high flux isotope reactor.

This paper describes the hardware and software upgrades, operation, and performance of the high intensity diffractometer for residual stress analysis (HIDRA) instrument, a residual stress mapping neutron diffractometer located at the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge Tennessee, USA. Following a major upgrade in 2018, the new instrument has a single 3He multiwire 2D 30 × 30 cm2 position sensitive detector, yielding a field of view of 17° 2θ. The increase in the field of view (from 4° 2θ) from the previous model instrument has contributed to the tremendous improvement in the out of plane solid angle such that the 3D count rate could be obtained easily. Accordingly, the hardware, software, Data Acquisition System (DAS), and so on have also been updated. Finally, all these enhanced features of HIDRA have been ably demonstrated by conducting multi directional diffraction measurements in the quenched 750-T74 aluminum, and the evolved and improved strain/stress mappings are presented.

Probing orientation information using 3-dimensional reciprocal space volume analysis.

The crystallographic texture of polycrystalline materials is the result of how these materials are processed and what external forces materials have experienced. Neutron and X-ray diffraction are standard methods to characterize global crystallographic textures. However, conventional neutron and X-ray texture analyses rely on pole figure inversion routines derived from intensity analysis of individual reflections or powder Rietveld analysis to reconstruct and model the orientation distribution from slices through reciprocal space. In this work, we describe an original approach to directly probe the crystallographic texture information of rolled aluminum from the intensity distribution in 3-dimensional reciprocal space volumes measured simultaneously. Using the TOPAZ time-of-flight Laue neutron diffractometer, reciprocal space analysis allowed determination of "pole spheres" with <1° angular resolution. These pole spheres are compared with reconstructed pole figures from classic texture analysis.

Current capabilities of the residual stress diffractometer at the high flux isotope reactor.

The engineering diffractometer 2nd Generation Neutron Residual Stress Facility (NRSF2) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's High Flux Isotope Reactor was built specifically for the mapping of residual strains. NRSF2 is optimized to investigate a wide range of engineering materials by providing the user a selection of monochromatic neutron wavelengths to maintain the selected Bragg reflection near 2θ = 90°, which is the optimal scattering geometry for strain mapping. Details of the instrument configuration and operation are presented, and considerations for experimental planning are also discussed. Selected examples of recent residual stress work completed with NRSF2 are presented to highlight capabilities.

Time filtering of event based neutron scattering data: A pathway to study the dynamic structural responses of materials.

Time-resolved diffraction has become a vital tool for probing dynamic responses to an applied stimulus. Such experiments traditionally use hardware solutions to histogram measured data into their respective bin. We will show that a major advantage of event-based data acquisition, which time-stamps measured diffraction data with 100 ns accuracy, is much preferred over hardware histogramming of the data by enabling postprocessing for advanced custom binning using a software solution. This approach is made even more powerful by coupling measured diffraction data with metadata about the applied stimuli and material response. In this work, we present a time-filter approach that leverages the power of event-based diffraction collection to reduce stroboscopic data measured over many hours into equally weighted segments that represent subsets of the response to a single cycle of the applied stimulus. We demonstrate this approach by observing ferroelectric/ferroelastic domain wall motion during electric field cycling of BaTiO3. The developed approach can readily be expanded to investigate other dynamic phenomena using complex sample environments.

Atom chip apparatus for experiments with ultracold rubidium and potassium gases.

We present a dual chamber atom chip apparatus for generating ultracold (87)Rb and (39)K atomic gases. The apparatus produces quasi-pure Bose-Einstein condensates of 10(4) (87)Rb atoms in an atom chip trap that features a dimple and good optical access. We have also demonstrated production of ultracold (39)K and subsequent loading into the chip trap. We describe the details of the dual chamber vacuum system, the cooling lasers, the magnetic trap, the multicoil magnetic transport system, the atom chip, and two optical dipole traps. Due in part to the use of light-induced atom desorption, the laser cooling chamber features a sufficiently good vacuum to also support optical dipole trap-based experiments. The apparatus is well suited for studies of atom-surface forces, quantum pumping and transport experiments, atom interferometry, novel chip-based traps, and studies of one-dimensional many-body systems.

Improving the sensitivity of the end-cap reflectron time-of-flight mass spectrometer.

A miniaturized time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometer utilizes an end-cap reflectron to achieve high kinetic energy focusing and improved mass resolution. However, the coaxial geometry gives rise to considerable losses in sensitivity resulting from reflected ion trajectories close to the center. These trajectories were modeled, using initial ion velocity distributions in the radial direction up to 300 m s(-1), and the portion of the active area of the detector that is utilized was evaluated experimentally using a variable diameter iris diaphragm. The sensitivity was improved by modification of the reflectron by tilting the end-cap electrode 4 degrees and redirecting the ions to a portion of the detector active area. Sensitivity was then measured as 3 fmol of the peptide substance P.

Miniaturized time-of-flight mass spectrometer for peptide and oligonucleotide analysis.

A matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometer was developed which uses a novel reflectron composed of a grounded cylinder and an adjustable endcap electrode to provide high-order kinetic energy focusing for a miniaturized mass analyzer. The nearly quadratic potential form of the reflecting field focuses ions desorbed from a source of very small dimensions formed by placing the sample probe within the centered hole of the coaxial dual channel plate detector. At the same time, the depth of the reflectron can be adjusted to accommodate a short drift length between the source/detector and the reflectron. For larger drift lengths, in particular to allow the addition of an XY stage for the analysis of sample arrays, endcap reflectron focusing can be combined with time-delayed ion extraction to achieve good mass resolution. The instrument has been used for the analysis of peptides digested with trypsin or carboxypeptidase, and also small DNA oligomers.

Wound infection rates in dogs and cats after use of cotton muslin or disposable impermeable fabric as barrier material: 720 cases (1983-1989).

A retrospective study involving 720 dogs and cats that underwent a variety of elective surgical procedures was done to compare the effectiveness of reusable cotton barrier materials with that of a commercially available disposable barrier system for prevention of wound infection. The overall wound infection rate, using cotton barrier materials, was 3.1% and for disposable materials, was 4.4%. The difference between groups was not significant.