MEASUREMENT OF CAVITATION DAMAGE IN ISOTHERMALLY CREPT AL SICP COMPOSITES USING SMALL-ANGLE NEUTRON-SCATTERING/

Small-angle neutron scattering is shown to enable the detection of cav ities in strained Al/SiCp composites. An iterative method based upon a nalytically calculated scatterer size distribution functions is introd uced. Generally, this method allowed the determination of scatterer sh apes with little initial knowledge of their exact geometry. It is sugg ested that fewer cavities are nucleated during tensile testing than du ring creep tests. Larger reinforcement sizes are demonstrated to raise the rate of void growth, but to lower the overall number of generated cavities. Composite pre-fatiguing is shown to increase significantly the number of nucleated voids.