TY - JOUR A1 - Osterloh, Kurt A1 - Fratzscher, Daniel A1 - Schwabe, A. A1 - Schillinger, B. A1 - Zscherpel, Uwe A1 - Ewert, Uwe T1 - Radiography and partial tomography of wood with thermal neutrons T2 - Nuclear instruments and methods in physics research A N2 - The effective high neutron scattering absorption coefficient of hydrogen (48.5 cm²/g) due to the scattering allows neutrons to reveal hydrocarbon structures with more contrast than X-rays, but at the same time limits the sample size and thickness that can be investigated. Many planar shaped objects, particularly wood samples, are sufficiently thin to allow thermal neutrons to transmit through the sample in a direction perpendicular to the planar face but not in a parallel direction, due to increased thickness. Often, this is an obstacle that prevents some tomographic reconstruction algorithms from obtaining desired results because of inadequate information or presence of distracting artifacts due to missing projections. This can be true for samples such as the distribution of glue in glulam (boards of wooden layers glued together), or the course of partially visible annual rings in trees where the features of interest are parallel to the planar surface of the sample. However, it should be possible to study these features by rotating the specimen within a limited angular range. In principle, this approach has been shown previously in a study with fast neutrons [2]. A study of this kind was performed at the Antares facility of FRM II in Garching with a 2.6×107/cm² s thermal neutron beam. The limit of penetration was determined for a wooden step wedge carved from a 2 cm×4 cm block of wood in comparison to other materials such as heavy metals and Lucite as specimens rich in hydrogen. The depth of the steps was 1 cm, the height 0.5 cm. The annual ring structures were clearly detectable up to 2 cm thickness. Wooden specimens, i.e. shivers, from a sunken old ship have been subjected to tomography. Not visible from the outside, clear radial structures have been found that are typical for certain kinds of wood. This insight was impaired in a case where the specimen had been soaked with ethylene glycol. In another large sample study, a planar board made of glulam has been studied to show the glued layers. This study shows not only the limits of penetration in wood but also demonstrates access to structures perpendicular to the surface in larger planar objects by tomography with fast neutrons, even with incomplete sets of projection data that covers an angular range of only 90° or even 60°. PB - Elsevier B.V. CY - Amsterdam KW - Neutron computed tomography KW - Limited angle tomography KW - Wood KW - Annual rings PY - 2011 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-bam/frontdoor/index/index/docId/24918 AN - OPUS4-24918 SN - 0168-9002 SN - 0167-5087 VL - 651 IS - 1 SP - 236 EP - 239 AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany