Development of a Portable XRD Grain Orientation Analyzer

Directionally solidified nickel superalloys are commonly used in turbine blades for high temperature aircraft and space propulsion engines and land-based, high-efficiency power generating plants. The casting of these parts does not always assure perfect crystal grain orientation that is critical for performance under high temperature conditions. Recent engine failures and aircraft mishaps have made imperative efficient and direct measurement of grain orientation in aircraft turbine blades. There does not exist a method to measure grain orientation across the entire turbine blade. Conventional chemical etching and visual inspection or laboratory based x-ray analysis is unsuitable for entire turbine blade crystal quality control. X-Ray Optical Systems (XOS) of East Greenbush, NY proposes to develop a compact, low power, large beam x-ray diffraction analyzer that can directly and non-destructively measure whole turbine blade crystal grain orientation in factory production lines or in the field. This is made possible by using novel, proprietary large size polycapillary collimating x-ray optics and highly stable and reliable X-Beam x-ray sources developed by XOS which have been successfully applied to in-line measurements of crystal texture of superconducting thin films and on-line measurements of phase distributions in steel plating factories.