Neutron radiography inspection of investment castings

Investment casting, also known as the lost wax process, is a manufacturing method employed to produce near net shape metal articles. Traditionally, investment casting has been used to produce structural titanium castings for aero-engine applications with wall thickness less than 1 in (2.54 cm). Recently, airframe manufacturers have been exploring the use of titanium investment casting to replace components traditionally produced from forgings. Use of titanium investment castings for these applications reduces weight, cost, lead time, and part count. Recently, the investment casting process has been selected to produce fracture critical structural titanium airframe components. These airframe components have pushed the traditional inspection techniques to their physical limits due to cross sections on the order of 3 in (7.6 cm). To overcome these inspection limitations, a process incorporating neutron radiography (n-ray) has been developed. In this process, the facecoat of the investment casting mold material contains a cocalcined mixture of yttrium oxide and gadolinium oxide. The presence of the gadolinium oxide, allows for neutron radiographic imaging (and eventual removal and repair) of mold facecoat inclusions that remain within these thick cross sectional castings. Probability of detection (POD) studies have shown a 3 x improvement of detecting a 0.050 x 0.007 in2 (1.270 x 0.178 mm2) inclusion of this cocalcined material using n-ray techniques when compared to the POD using traditional X-ray techniques. Further, it has been shown that this n-ray compatible mold facecoat material produces titanium castings of equal metallurgical quality when compared to the traditional materials. Since investment castings can be very large and heavy, the neutron radiography facilities at the University of California, Davis McClellan Nuclear Radiation Center (UCD/MNRC) were used to develop the inspection techniques. The UCD/MNRC has very unique facilities that can handle large parts up to 39 ft (12 m) in length and 13 ft (4 m) high weighing up to 5000 lbs (2300 kg). These handling systems are robotically driven. The neutron radiographic system consists of a highly thermalized neutron beam. The neutron beam has an intensity of 5.6 x 10(6) n/cm2 s, with a L/D = 200 at a power of 2 MW. A divergent beam collimator is used which provides a beam of approximately 22 in (56 cm) in diameter at the film plane. A vacuum cassette with a gadolinium vapor deposited screen is used to collect the image. Exposure times can be as short as 3 min, or up to 30 min.