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In situ investigations of cracks propagating at up to 2.5 km s-1 along an (001) plane of a silicon single crystal are reported, using X-ray diffraction megahertz imaging with intense and time-structured synchrotron radiation. The studied system is based on the Smart Cut process, where a buried layer in a material (typically Si) is weakened by microcracks and then used to drive a macroscopic crack (10-1 m) in a plane parallel to the surface with minimal deviation (10-9 m). A direct confirmation that the shape of the crack front is not affected by the distribution of the microcracks is provided. Instantaneous crack velocities over the centimetre-wide field of view were measured and showed an effect of local heating by the X-ray beam. The post-crack movements of the separated wafer parts could also be observed and explained using pneumatics and elasticity. A comprehensive view of controlled fracture propagation in a crystalline material is provided, paving the way for the in situ measurement of ultra-fast strain field propagation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple coherent-imaging method due to Paganin et al is widely employed for phase–amplitude reconstruction of samples using a single paraxial x-ray propagation-based phase-contrast image. The method assumes that the sample-to-detector distance is sufficiently small for the associated Fresnel number to be large compared to unity. The algorithm is particularly effective when employed in a tomographic setting, using a single propagation-based phase-contrast image for each projection. Here we develop a simple extension of the method, which improves the reconstructed contrast of very fine sample features. This provides first-principles motivation for boosting fine spatial detail associated with high Fourier frequencies, relative to the original method, and was inspired by several recent works employing empirically-obtained Fourier filters to a similar end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laser welding is a key technology for many industrial applications. However, its online quality monitoring is an open issue due to the highly complex nature of the process. This work aims at enriching existing approaches in this field. We propose a method for real-time detection of process instabilities that can lead to defects. Hard X-ray radiography is used for the ground truth observations of the sub-surface events that are critical for the quality. A deep artificial neural network is applied to reveal the unique signatures of those events in wavelet spectrograms from the laser back-reflection and acoustic emission signals. The autonomous classification of the revealed signatures is tested on real-life data, while the real-time performance is reached by means of parallel computing. The confidence of the quality classification ranges between 71% and 99%, with a temporal resolution down to 2 ms and a computation time per classification task as low as 2 ms. This approach is a new paradigm in the digitization of industrial processes and can be exploited to provide feedbacks in a closed-loop quality control system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belite cements (BCs) could be a more sustainable binder than Portland cements (PCs) but adequate knowledge of the hydration features has still to be built. In particular, the mild curing hydration temperature effects have been extensively studied for PCs but not for BCs. This research was triggered by a previous work reporting improved mechanical strengths of BCs at higher curing temperatures. Here, we report the hydration characteristics of a BC at 20, 40 and 60 °C and compared to those of a typical PC. We have corroborated previous findings and used a multi-technique approach including Rietveld phase analysis, thermal analysis, calorimetry, silicon MAS-NMR, mercury intrusion porosimetry and chiefly synchrotron X-ray microtomography, to thoroughly understand the different behavior. In a nutshell, the improved mechanical performances at mild curing temperatures for BCs are mainly due to a much larger belite degree of reaction, with lower porosity coarsening of belite cements also playing a role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]