Nuclear Thickness Gauge
Project is limited to 5 teams!!!
- An aluminum company wishes to design a nuclear radiation gauge to control the thickness of aluminum sheet for aircrafts. The metal is rolled out between two rollers to produce the correct metal thickness (0.75 mm) at the rate of 3 m per second. The thickness of the sheet is to be monitored continuously using a nuclear gauge. If the thickness changes by more than 1%, a control system based on the signal from the gauge is used to automatically adjust the roller spacing.
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The nuclear gauge is a simple device where an electron emitting radiation source is placed on one side of the sheet and a radiation detector across from it on the other side. If the thickness of the sheet increases, less radiation gets to the detector; in the case of a thickness decrease, more radiation gets to the detector. Thus the variation in signal from the detector is used as an indicator of thickness change to control the spacing between the rollers.
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Your job is to set up a gauge of this kind in the laboratory with the help of your instructor and TA, make measurements on a set of Al sheets of known thicknesses to determine the response of the gauge to thickness changes, and to us this information to design a system that might be used in a manufacturing plant. The objective is to develop a gauge that will control the thickness to within ± 1% with a response time of 30 milliseconds such that the waste of metal will be small. Radiation sources and detectors will be provided, as well as instruction on their use.
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