A new method to obtain the crystallographic texture of polycrystalline materials in Bragg edge imaging experiments

Abstract

In polycrystalline materials, the shape and height of Bragg edges observed in wavelength resolved neutron transmission experiments depend on the crystallographic texture. Previous works have proved the capacity of actual models to predict the transmission spectra once the texture of the material is known. In this work, we summarize the recent advances done trying to obtain information of the texture from the experimental transmission data. The basis of this method resides in a compact expression of the coherent elastic cross section in terms of the Fourier coefficients of the orientation distribution function, which describes the crystallographic texture. The validity of this method is restricted to the applicability of the kinematic approximation of diffraction (polycrystalline materials with grain sizes below 10μm) and to materials with spatially uniform texture.