New features in cold neutron radiography and tomography Part II: applied energy-selective neutron radiography and tomography

Abstract

Abstract The neutron attenuation coefficient drops for many solid materials quite drastically at a defined cold neutron energy known as a Bragg-cut-off in the cross-section diagrams. In many cases, the drop in attenuation for the corresponding elements is significant and this behavior can be exploited to change the material contrast in radiography and tomography images by modifying the spectrum of the applied neutron beam. The energy-dependent experiments were performed at the Prompt Gamma-ray Activation beam line where the irradiation position is at the end of a curved neutron guide, which delivers cold neutrons from the spallation source SINQ (PSI, Switzerland). This beam position gave the opportunity to perform radiography and tomography at low neutron energies. An effective monochromatization of the primary neutron beam was obtained by using a neutron velocity selector. The intensity of the modified beam was still reasonable for radiography images at different neutron energies and the experiments were performed in relatively short measuring times. A variety of samples were studied to illustrate possible applications of energy-selective radiography and tomography. This new neutron imaging technique provided encouraging results and projects of developing permanent facilities for such investigations at PSI and FRM II are under study.