Interphase precipitation occurring during solid-state phase transformations in micro-alloyed steels is generally studied through transmission electron microscopy, atom probe tomography, and ex situ measurements of Small-Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS). The advantage of SANS over the other two characterization techniques is that SANS allows for the quantitative determination of size distribution, volume fraction, and number density of a statistically significant number of precipitates within the resulting matrix at room temperature. However, the performance of ex situ SANS measurements alone does not provide information regarding the probable correlation between interphase precipitation and phase transformations. This limitation makes it necessary to perform in situ and simultaneous studies on precipitation and phase transformations in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the nucleation and growth of precipitates in relation to the evolution of austenite decomposition at high temperatures. A furnace is, thus, designed and developed for such in situ studies in which SANS measurements can be simultaneously performed with neutron diffraction measurements during the application of high-temperature thermal treatments. The furnace is capable of carrying out thermal treatments involving fast heating and cooling as well as high operation temperatures (up to 1200 °C) for a long period of time with accurate temperature control in a protective atmosphere and in a magnetic field of up to 1.5 T. The characteristics of this furnace give the possibility of developing new research studies for better insight of the relationship between phase transformations and precipitation kinetics in steels and also in other types of materials containing nano-scale microstructural features.

The performance of the new neutron powder diffraction instrument PEARL that is installed at the research reactor of Delft University of Technology is reported. It is based on the optimization concepts developed by Cussen [Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. Sect. A (2007), 583, 394-406], which lead to high performance competing with existing constant-wavelength neutron powder diffractometers, despite the relatively low source brightness of the 2MW reactor of Delft University of Technology.This manuscript describes the novel neutron powder diffractometer PEARL at Delft University of Technology and shows the first experimental results.

Gamma sensitivity of an ISIS linear position sensitive wavelength shifting fiber (WLSF) detector was evaluated at the Reactor Institute Delft (RID) using ⁶⁰Co and ¹³⁷Cs sources. The caveat of quoting gamma sensitivity of a detector in pure gamma fields is that detectors are never operated in gamma only environments. A concern is that the sensitivity may increase during neutron measurements due to the increase of pulse pile-up which can occur in ZnS:Ag detectors as the afterglow of a neutron event coincides with a gamma scintillation event causing the gamma event to appear brighter than it actually was. For this reason, gamma sensitivity measurements were performed on a time of flight neutron reflectometer at RID. Results presented here detail neutron efficiency and rate capability of the detector as well as demonstrate gamma sensitivity in pure gamma and mixed fields. It is shown that, in a pure gamma field, the detector has gamma sensitivity on the order of 10 ^-7310^-6 for ⁶⁰Co and 10^-9-10 ^-8 for ¹³⁷Cs as a result of detector geometry, fibre coding and signal processing. Gamma sensitivity is unchanged to any statistical significance in a mixed neutron gamma field. A less than 1% gamma-induced dead-timing at neutron rates above 5kHz and high gamma flux on the order of 10⁴ gammas/second/cm² was observed.