Recording Flash X-Ray Burst Times with Scintillation Crystals

Abstract

A scintillator crystal system whose output is monitored with a streak camera was developed to measure the times between a number of flash x-ray bursts used to radiograph dynamic mechanical events. Light flashes from NaI(Tl) crystals exposed to flash x-ray beams were conducted from the crystals through fiber optics bundles to the slit plane of a streak camera. The short duration of the x-ray and optical pulses allowed the streak camera to be run in the half-slit mode. Separations of the resultant images along the time axis of the camera film were measured to determine the times between flash x-ray bursts to accuracies of 35 nsec.