Focuslab - Plasma Focus Laboratory
Instituto de Física del Plasma - CONICET
Departamento de Física Juan José Giambiagi
Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Hard x ray imaging of metallic objects using a Plasma Focus
Static objects
This photography shows the basic experimental setup for non-conventional
radiography based on Plasma Focus hard x rays.
The radiographic film goes inside the intensifying cassette (orange in color)
that can be seen on the left (first plane).
The Plasma Focus stainless steel chamber is on the rigth, facing the cassette.
The chamber volume is about 1 dm3.
Behind the chamber are the capacitors heads (white), spark gaps and cables. Capacitors are connected in parallel.
The objects to be hard x ray imaged are placed outside the chamber, on the
chamber-cassette line of sight. The chamber-object distance depends on the
object size and material. For the examples given below is about 1 m.
The exposure time is about 50 ns, thus allowing for ultra fast hard x
ray radiography (see below).
Hard x-ray radiography of metallic objects through metallic walls
This is an introspective hard x-ray image of a metallic BNC tee connector hidden behind a 9 mm
thick metallic wall.
The wall is an iron disk whose border can be seen on the upper left corner.
The small black circle close to the border is a through hole made on the wall.
The image was obtained with one shot on deuterium at 4 mbar.
This is an introspective hard x-ray image of two metallic BNC tee connectors hidden behind
(a) 22 mm and (b) 9 mm
thick metallic wall.
It was obtained with one shot on deuterium. The capacitors charging voltage was 30 kV.
The measured effective energy of the x rays is 102 keV.
See more details in the following paper.
Fast rotating objects
Since the Plasma Focus output pulse duration is about 50 ns, the device is an excellent
radiation source for ultrafast radiography. To demonstrate this, we conducted the
experiment illustrated below.
The basic experimental setup can be seen on the left.
The aluminum turbine shown in the top two snapshots was mounted on a drilling tool (not shown
in the pictures), and placed
in front of the Plasma Focus chamber (bottom picture).
Two hard x-ray images were taken: one with the turbine being static, and the other one, when
rotating at 6100 rpm.
The obtained results are shown on the left.
See more details in this paper.
Plasma focus hard x rays in the media
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Updated:
18-Feb-2007
