Kazuya Aizawa

Current Status of Engineering Materials Diffractometer at J-PARC

The Engineering Materials Diffractometer “TAKUMI” is designed and has been constructed at Materials & Life Science Facility (MLF) of Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) to conduct various kinds of studies on materials science and engineering and to promote industrial applications, related with strain measurements. The commissioning of TAKUMI has been started from September 2008, and several user programs have been done. In the commissioning, a resolution Δd/d at high resolution mode (with incident beam collimation) of less than 0.2% was achieved in a diffraction experiment using 2 mm diameter thick annealed piano wire. The d-range measured by TAKUMI with single pulse frame, i.e. standard operation, was confirmed to be 0.05 nm to 0.27 nm, showing that the optimum range for materials research is covered by this machine. TAKUMI adopted an event mode data recording method. It was found that the recording method is very useful to manipulate data as we like, for instance, detector range, time of flight binning width and time resolved data, even after the experiment has been finished.

AMATERAS: A Cold-Neutron Disk Chopper Spectrometer

AMATERAS is a new disk-chopper-type spectrometer installed at Materials and Life Science Experimental Facility (MLF) of J-PARC. AMATERAS is equipped with an extra chopper for pulse shaping at the upstream position, in addition to a monochromating chopper, which conventional chopper spectrometers at pulsed source have. Owing to the use of these choppers and the high peak intensity from a coupled moderator source at MLF, the AMATERAS design realizes high-intensity and high-energy-resolution measurements in quasielastic and inelastic neutron scattering experiments. The spectrometer had the first neutron beam in May 2009. During the course of commissioning, the performance of the spectrometer was confirmed by conducting test experiments. AMATERAS is now open to users and is producing scientific outputs.

In situ lattice strain mapping during tensile loading using the neutron transmission and diffraction methods

In this study, the change in internal lattice strain in an iron plate during tensile deformation was investigated by performing in situ measurements under applied force. The lattice strain was evaluated by neutron diffraction and Bragg-edge transmission. The neutron diffraction results showed that the averaged 110 lattice strain along the direction perpendicular to the applied force was between −422 and −109 × 10−6. The position dependence of the lattice strain and the change in the distribution of elastic strain in an iron plate with notches during tensile deformation was obtained by Bragg-edge transmission. It was also observed that, when the load increased over 30 kN, the area of plastic deformation increased around the positions of the notches.

Neutron diffraction measurement of internal strain in the first Japanese ITER CS conductor sample

Several conductor samples were fabricated and tested in the SULTAN facility at CRPP for ITER Central Solenoid (CS) conductor qualification. From the result of the cyclic testing on the first and second conductor samples named CSJA01 and CSJA02, continuous linear degradation of the current sharing temperature (Tcs) was found. From the result of the visual inspection, a large deflection on the lower loading side (LLS) in the high field zone (HFZ) was observed. The bending strain of the strands cannot be evaluated from only the deflection obtained visually. To evaluate the strain of strands in CSJA01 quantitatively, a neutron diffraction measurement of the CSJA01 left leg was performed using the engineering materials diffractometer ‘Takumi’ in J-PARC. From the result, the large bending strain at the LLS in the HFZ was found. Therefore, the Tcs degraded position in the conductor sample due to the cyclic testing can be determined.

Neutron Diffraction Measurements of Internal Strain in

The superconducting properties of Nb3Sn strands are very sensitive to strain. Measuring internal strain of Nb3Sn in Cable-In-Conduit Conductors (CICC) is important for evaluating the superconducting performance of CICC. Internal strain can be determined by neutron diffraction measurement using Takumi of J-PARC. Neutron diffraction measurement becomes a strong tool for evaluating directly the internal strain of Nb3Sn in CICC.

{\rm Nb}_{3}{\rm Sn}

The Engineering Materials Diffractometer Application Kit called EMAKi has been developed to control the Engineering Materials Diffractometer, TAKUMI, and treat data obtained by it. It is expected that TAKUMI will be widely used by not only academic users but also industrial users. We have designed EMAKi to be user-friendly interface for novice users by graphical user interface (GUI). In addition, adopting Python programming language for its development has enabled advanced users to control the diffractometer flexibly and treat the data easily. During instrumentation commissioning and running user programs, the software has demonstrated useful.

Cable-In-Conduit Conductors

The construction of The Engineering Materials Diffractometer, TAKUMI of J-PARC has been finished on March 2009, and the commissioning has been started from September 2008 being parallel with the final stage of the construction. In the commissioning, after checking the validity and the stability of the detectors and the data acquisition system, powder diffraction data of an austenitic steel alloy with 10 mm diameter without beam collimation (high intensity mode) was measured, and the resolution Δd/d of 0.4% was confirmed, as designed. Further commissioning was done also with 2 mm diameter of annealed piano wire with combination of beam collimation (high resolution mode), and the resolution Δd/d of less than 0.2% was confirmed to be achieved. TAKUMI adopted an event mode data recording method. It was found that the recording method is very useful to manipulate data as we like, for instance, detector range, time of flight binning width and time resolved data, even the experiment has been finished.

Application Software Development for the Engineering Materials Diffractometer, TAKUMI

J-PARC Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), Tokai, Ibaraki 319-1195, Japan Research Center for Neutron Science and Technology, Comprehensive Research Organization for Science and Society (CROSS), Tokai, Ibaraki 319-1106, Japan J-PARC Center, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0801, Japan Research Reactor Institute, Kyoto University (KURRI), Kumatori, Osaka 590-0494, Japan

Aspire to Become TAKUMI - TAKUMI Present Status and Research Topics -

A new design of opposed anvil cell for time-of-flight neutron powder diffraction was prepared for use at advanced pulsed sources. A couple of single-crystal sapphire sphere anvils and a gasket of fully hardened Ti–Zr null alloy were combined to compress 35 mm3 of sample volume to 1 GPa and 11 mm3 to 2 GPa of pressures, respectively. A very high-quality powder diffraction pattern was obtained at Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex for a controversial high pressure phase of methane hydrate. The counting statistics, resolution, absolute accuracy and d-value range of the pattern were all improved to be best suitable for precise structure refinement. The sample is optically accessible to be measured by Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy during and after compression. The current cell will be an alternative choice to study hydrogenous materials of complex structures that are stable at the described pressure regime.

The Design and q Resolution of the Small and Wide Angle Neutron Scattering Instrument (TAIKAN) in J-PARC

A gaseous neutron-imaging detector with individual signal readouts was developed for a high spatial resolution and a fast temporal response. The system comprises a multiwire head, a gas chamber with 541 channels, fast amplifier-shaper-discriminator boards, a logic circuit for position calculation and encoding, and a fast data-acquisition system. The developed prototype detector incorporating 40×40 channels exhibited a temporal response of ∼100ns (pulse width of the amplified signal) and a spatial resolution of 0.9 and 1.4mm (full width at half maximum) in the x- and y-directions, respectively, with a gas pressure of 4.2-atm helium with 1.8-atm CF4.