PART VI - Preferred Orientation of Beryllium Sheet Using Small Spherical Specimens

The Jetter and borie' teclznique of determining textures using a spherical specimen has been applied to tlze study of compression-rolled beryllium sheet. Snzall spheres the order of 1 mm in diam cut from the beryllium sheet were autotnatically rotated about tz41o axes using the G.E. single-crystal goniometer. Quantitative pole figures were obtained without tke need to apply absorption corrections. Compression-rolled beryllium exhibited peak intensities ,for (0002) planes of positions tilted 10 deg to the rolling plane and a near random distribution of (1010) planes about the nornal to the rolling plane. TECHNIQUES for determining textures of rolled sheet material are amply described in the literature. The techniques are found to be variations of two basic methods. One due to Decker, Asp, and arker, referred to as the transmission method, utilizes a thin-sheet specimen in which the X-ray beam enters the specimen from one side and the intensity of the beam which emerges from the opposite side is measured. The second method due to chulz,3 referred to as the reflection method, utilizes a thick specimen and the intensity of the beam emerging from the same side is measured. The two rotations of the specimen in the beam are designated a and 8. In order to completely determine the texture of sheet material, it is generally necessary to use a combination of the two methods. The calculations involved in correcting the raw X-ray data for absorption effects and the combining of the data obtained by the two methods are very laborious and time consuming. To avoid the intensity corrections which arise as a result of the changing diffraction volume and path length within the sample other methods have been proposed. The Norton method utilizes a cylindrically shaped specimen cut from the sheet material. Since the rods have rotational symmetry, the absorption correction is constant for rotations about the sheet texture. Jetter and Borie' employed a spherical specimen to analyze the fiber texture of extruded aluminum rods. The spheres were rotated rapidly about the fiber axis to include a large number of grains in the X-ray beam and changes in intensity with respect to tilts of the fiber axis were measured. The absorption correction was constant for all angles and was neglected. The Jetter and Borie' technique finds excellent ap- plication to very fine-grained low-absorbing metals in which the entire sphere volume can contribute to the diffraction volume. In the case of low-absorbing metals, however, serious limitations on specimen thickness occur as demonstrated by Braggs due to de-focussing effects. Peak shifts may occur which negate the assumption that integrated intensities are proportional to peak intensities. These limitations in sphere size to the order of 0.5 to 1 mm for beryllium require that the grain size be sufficiently small to include a large enough statistical sample. The present paper describes the application of spherical specimens less than 1 mm in diam to the quantitative determination of pole figures for compression-rolled beryllium sheet having a grain size the order of 10 p. EXPERIMENTAL 1) Specimen Preparation. Two techniques for spark-machining beryllium spheres were tried. One involved the use of a hollow cylinder as a cutting tool. The tool was fed into the rotating cylindrical specimen as shown in Fig. l(a). The hollow cylinder was carefully aligned such that the axis of the cylinder and the axis of the specimen lay in the same plane and were 90 deg to each other. As the hollow cylinder was fed into the rotating cylindrical specimen, a spherical shape was formed as shown in Fig. 1. Alignment was very critical. Slight misalignment resulted in the formation of a barrel-shaped specimen instead of a sphere. A second technique involved the use of a cutting wheel shaped as shown in Fig. 2 with a groove of the desired radius. A section of the sheet specimen was first turned into a cylinder on the left part of the cutting wheel. It was then shifted to the right and a spherical specimen was turned as shown in Fig. 2. The axis of the cylinder lay in the plane of the sheet. Flats corresponding to the rolling plane of the sheet were used to grip the specimen during the machining operation and these served to identify the rolling plane of the sphere. 2) Rotation of Spec=. The spherical specimen is shown mounted on the G.E. single-crystal goniometer in Fig. 3. The knob A of the goniometer shown in Fig. 3 rotates the specimen about the pedestal axis. These angles have been designated as @ angles. The knob B rotates the specimen about an axis perpendicular to the pedestal axis. These angles have been designated as p angles. A device was made to automatically drive the single-crystal goniometer by means of two flexible shafts connected to the A and B knobs as shown in Fig. 3. The motor system was designed to rotate the knob A, thus rotating the specimen through angles of $I while the B knob remained stationary. After one complete