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This paper presents a study showing the efficacy of the inherent strain method and modifications thereof to predict residual stresses within selective laser melted components. Cubic specimens with variations in hatch rotations were produced, and the residual stress state was simulated and measured by employing the neutron diffraction technique. Variances in the simulated and observed values of stress in the samples were investigated to show the efficacy of the isotropic, orthotropic, and thermo-mechanical simulation methods. The simulations indicated a suitable prediction of the residual stress with the incorporation of hatch rotation, but as being less adept at resolving the residual stress of the components with no hatch rotation. The most accurate simulation results in the horizontal stress directions were seen for the 90° hatch rotation specimen, for which the average difference between the measured and simulated values were below 65 MPa for all simulation types. The simulations largely over-predicted Z direction compressive stresses; however, the thermo-mechanical simulation type predicted this stress with an average difference of 116, 98, and 72 MPA for the 0°, 67°, and 90° hatch rotations respectively.

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The neutron detector of Necsa's "Powder Instrument for Transition in Structure Investigations" (PITSI) diffractometer is a pseudo area configuration that has an active area of ∼ 610 × 375 mm 2 that is established by 15 vertically stacked 3 He gas-filled linear position sensitive tube detectors. In its standard geometry the sample-to-detector distance is 1.6 m that gives a detector sustention angle of 2θ = 21 •. A full diffraction pattern over the range 10 • 2θ 115 • is covered in six discrete steps. This process may be very time consuming for weak scattering materials. To improve the instrument performance, the active area of the detector bank is being increased to 48 tubes comprising three banks each with 16 tubes separated by a dead-space of 18.5°at 1.6 m. This configuration requires a step-scan of only 2 positions to cover the complete 2θ range of interest, effectively increasing the instrument acquisition speed by a factor greater than 3. As an added flexibility the overall data acquisition time can be further reduced by decreasing the sample to detector distance to 1.2 m that increases the intensity per pixel at the expense of the instrument's angular resolution. In this report the conversion of the current USB-communication based system to an Ethernet based system to reduce the hardware footprint and complexity, as well as the amount of cabling needed is reported. The optimisation of the operating parameters of the new detector electronics is also discussed.

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An alternative sample positioning method is reported for use in conjunction with sample positioning and experiment planning software systems deployed on some neutron diffraction strain scanners. In this approach, the spherical fiducial markers and location trackers used with optical metrology hardware are replaced with a specifically designed multi-material fiducial marker that requires one diffraction measurement. In a blind setting, the marker position can be determined within an accuracy of ±164 µm with respect to the instrument gauge volume. The scheme is based on a pre-determined relationship that links the diffracted peak intensity to the absolute positioning of the fiducial marker with respect to the instrument gauge volume. Two methods for establishing the linking relationship are presented, respectively based on fitting multi-dimensional quadratic functions and a cross-correlation artificial neural network.