Speaker
Description
For many years the inspection of parts and components by x-ray has been used in industrial applications, particularly to verify the integrity of safety critical items and to support product development. Today, the increasing use of high density “exotic” materials in complex structures made possible by additive manufacturing techniques requires the use of high-energy x-ray to fully penetrate the object. Analysis of the complex internal features of additively manufactured parts requires CT (computed tomography) scanning to provide volumetric data with increasingly high spatial resolution and contrast sensitivity.
CT techniques using current digital detectors and linear accelerators are summarized and a range of accelerator beam management techniques to minimize scatter radiation and maximize contrast to noise sensitivity are outlined, and the future performance requirements of accelerators to meet the future inspection performance demands are described.
These future needs will include likely conflicting demands for smaller targets, higher dose output, higher energy, and high reliability/availability.
