Workshop on “Industrial Applications”

Summary

The session was attended by about twenty participants.

Application Areas : In the USA and the UK, the inspection of aircraft turbine blades forms a major part of the workload. Mr. Newacheck provided details. However, Mr. G. Bayon reported that essentially no routin turbine blade neutron radiography inspection was performed in France. The difference is notable because France does have a major aircraft industry, and does perform much neutron radiography (typically 200 films per month at SACLAY, of which eighty per cent are pyrotechnics.

Cassette Types : The aluminium cassettes routinely used at the Aerotest Inc. facility differ from the SACLAY cassettes which use a magnesium window and a thich epoxy base to minimize neutron activation. During discussion of why the epoxy base does not cause backscatter, it was noted that the SACLAY team use gadolinium foils of thickness 250 microns : much thicker than the converters used at Aerotest, Inc.. This combined with the pure, low energy neutron beam from the ORPHEE guide tube could result in elimination of any scatter problem.

Image Intensifiers : Mr. Rougeot, the specialist in neutron image intensifiers from Thomson-CSF, raised the question of whether it was safe to use such high voltage equipment near pyrotechnics. The ensuing discussion was not conclusive but it was pointed out by Dr. Orphan of SAIC — USA, that pyrotechnics were often positioned for inspection near x-ray generators including powerful linear accelerators.

It was the impression of this reviewer that each of the above topics deserve follow-up consideration.