Abstract: ISIS is UK’s national neutron and muon facility and is available for all academic and industrial users. Neutron and muon techniques are very niche and are indispensable for characterising certain materials and properties. In this talk, I will be introducing neutron scattering in general as well as further focusing on the particular techniques of Engineering diffraction and Imaging. I will be introducing techniques, providing information about available equipment and talking about access mechanisms. I will further use specific examples to highlight the particular types of studies that can be done on neutron instruments. I will be using the example of a high entropy alloy study to elucidate the hierarchy of deformation mechanisms active in such alloys. I will demonstrate the use of residual strain measurements and the Bragg edge imaging technique to pin point areas of high stresses in bulk engineering components. Finally, I will show the power of modern tomographic techniques to study a variety of objects from dilution fridges to ancient fossils.

Short bio: Dr. Saurabh Kabra is group leader of the Engineering and Imaging group at the ISIS neutron and muon facility in the UK. He is also instrument scientist on the ENGIN-X neutron diffractometer (since 2012). Before this he completed postdoctoral fellowships at ANSTO, Australia and Lujan centre, Los alamos national laboratory, USA from 2007 to 2012. Dr. Kabra got his PhD in 2006 from the University of Tennessee while working as a research assistant at the Oak ridge national laboratory, USA. He got his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian institute of technology, Kanpur, India in 2002. Dr. Kabra’s has wide ranging research interests centred on diffraction methods applied to deformation mechanism in metallic systems. He is particularly interested in high entropy alloys, magnetic shape memory alloys and other systems that show twinning and/or martensitic transformations. Recently, he has been working on machine learning and artificial intelligence methods applied within the mechanical behaviour and structural integrity fields.