Energy resolution evaluation of decoupled neutron moderator for stress measurements via neutron diffraction with compact neutron source

Kakuta, Ryunosuke*; Takamura, Masato*; Xu, P. G.   ; Iwamoto, Chihiro*; Takanashi, Takaoki*; Otake, Yoshie*; Kurihara, Ryo*; Takahashi, Susumu*; Suzuki, Hiroshi  

During the production of high-strength steel structural parts, the residual stress is necessary to be well controlled for the better dimensional accuracy and the longer service life. The neutron diffraction measurement is a good candidate to monitor the microscopic lattice strain of polycrystalline materials in bulk average. RANS (Riken Accelerator-driven Compact Neutron Source) has been developed and upgraded aiming at in-house, on-site and on-demand measurements to meet with industrial needs. Recently, the phase volume fractions and the bulk textures of steel materials have been measured successfully at RANS. In order to measure the lattice strain at RANS, it is required to improve the energy resolution to observe slight peak shift, and the decoupled moderator is thought as a good solution method for that. In this study, a new decoupled moderator consisting of polyethylene with 20 cmm thickness and BC rubber was designed and fabricated, and its neutron beam characteristic was investigated in order to improve the time energy resolution to realize in-house neutron stress measurement at RANS. Here, the preliminary results of the resolutions comparing between the new decoupled moderator and the traditional coupled moderators with 20 and 40 mm thickness polyethylene will be reported together with the scattering angle dependent instrumental resolution of the linear neutron position-sensitive detector.