Leader: Sergey Kichanov

Work phone number: +7 (496) 216-35-79

Work E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Scientific problem:

Fragments of castings in metal molds are excellent markers for reconstructing the future technological level of ancient or medieval settlements. Recently, interest in the research of archaeological and cultural materials  using natural-science methods has increased. Among them, nondestructive testing (NDT) is particularly noteworthy that is very careful to valuable cultural heritage sites. Currently, the structural research of archeological metal materials is aimed at searching for some structural markers that can help to restore information about the location of a mine or forge, routes of import or trade of metal raw materials and identifying properties of casting processes. From this viewpoint, the cast iron products are not only cultural or historical items but also convenient models as a standard for studying the processes of corrosion propagation and cracks in metal products, a model indicator of casting and stamping, as well as chemical processing techniques of metal products. The neutron  non-destructive structural analysis, such as neutron tomography and neutron diffraction, provide sufficient penetration depth into massive metal objects. The goal of the student projects is to carry out experiments aimed at studying the structure of metal artifacts to identify structural markers of ancient production processes using neutron tomography and diffraction.

Objective: 

It is proposed to study the properties of the internal structure of massive metal samples using neutron tomography and diffraction.

Tasks:

1. Acquisition of data on the object under study, methods of neutron research, data analysis, software tools for data analysis. 

2. Implementing investigations of metal archaeological objects using neutron tomography and diffraction.

3. Reconstruction of a 3D prototype from neutron tomography data, analysis of the resulting prototype. Analysis of diffraction data.

4. Preparation of a qualifying paper based on the research results.

Research facilities: 

IBR-2 high flux pulsed reactor, NRT and DN-12 diffractometer