Contact profilometry digital data acquisition and conversion.

摘要

For many years the element contact profilometer in the Hot Fuel Examination Facility at Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho has served an important role in the post-irradiation examination of experimental and driver fuel elements irradiated in the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II or the Fast Fuel Test Facility. It measures the diameter over the length of irradiated elements. Using these data, an experimenter can determine how the physical shape of an element has changed due to in-reactor exposure. Previously, diameter measurements were mechanically registered on strip charts. Such data required manual entry into computers or calculators for subsequent quantitative analysis. Hand entry was time consuming, occasionally introduced typographical errors, and necessitated subjective interpretation (''eye-balling'') of diameter strip charts. Furthermore, storing information on irregularly-sized strip charts made archiving difficult. Clearly, experimenters desired a way to eliminate these problems. A project was initiated to implement a cost-effective solution to the problems of the existing system, as well as convert presently stored paper strip charts to the new, digital format. To obtain new profilometry data in a machine-readable form, the ConPro digital data acquisition system was installed to operate concurrently with the existing equipment.