Effect of gauge volume on strain measurement in rock materials using time-of-flight neutron diffraction

Our previous neutron diffraction measurements investigated strain accumulation mechanism(s) in rock materials under uniaxial compression. This technique, when applied to metallic materials, is suffered by surface effects, gauge volume size effects, and/or incident beam divergence that induce pseudo-strain. Knowledge of the pseudostrain is therefore necessary for precise evaluation of strain value in a stressed rock material. This work investigated the effects of gauge volume and incident neutron beam divergence on pseudo-strain in rock materials via neutron diffraction experiments performed on three types of sandstone. Spurious peak shifts appeared depending on the gauge volume or incident neutron beam divergence. These peak shifts were inferred to be derived from the difference between a neutron-weighted center of gravity position and a geometric center of the gauge volume position. However, changing the gauge volume height did not cause shift in the peak position. This indicates that to increase the neutron intensity for sufficient statistics, it is effective to increase the height of the incident beam.