Invited Paper Series – Editorial

Abstract

Dear Canadian Metallurgical Quarterly readers: It is our pleasure to bring you this series of invited papers selected from the ‘Applied Neutron Scattering in Engineering and Materials Science Research’ symposium, held during the Conference of Metallurgists (COM) 2013 in Montreal, Canada to the Canadian Metallurgical Quarterly. Understanding materials behaviour has been a key enabling factor in subsequent development of new technologies, systems and processes. Academic, industry and government collaborators have joined in studying materials using diverse tools using classical techniques, as well as more advanced approaches including visible light, x-rays, sound, electric and magnetic fields. To fully characterize materials, neutron beams should be included in the suite of available tools. Though sometime overlooked due to their scarcity, neutron beams are powerful, versatile and irreplaceable. They often provide unique information about the structure and properties of matter. While neutron beams are better known for fundamental scientific exploration, they are also frequently employed by industry to study metallic components with low tolerance for failure, such as jet engines, car engines, oil and gas pipelines, structural supports for bridges, submarine hulls, rail tracks, and heat exchangers or reactor parts in power plants. In these cases, neutron diffraction can be a vital step both in failure analysis and in qualification of parts before they used. The gentle, yet penetrating power of neutron beams allows one to non-destructively determine stress anywhere inside metallic components in all three spatial directions while the component is subjected to realistic conditions of pressure, temperature, applied stress, and even corrosive environments. Since this method is non-destructive, measurements can be taken on the same component before, after and sometimes during a manufacturing process. In addition to stress and strain, neutron beams are used to study crystallographic texture, phase evolution and transformations, or to examine thin films, surfaces and interfaces, or porous materials, such as may be relevant to hydrogen storage. In this issue, we feature papers on stress, solidification, metal phase analysis, aluminium heat treatment technologies, hydrogen in iron and steel, and studies of hydrogen mobility in Mg thin films. We hope you will enjoy this series of invited papers on Applied Neutron Scattering in Engineering and Materials Science Research, and hope to see you either in Chalk River, ON, at the NRU reactor, or at conferences where technical sessions on neutron beam work are held.