Austenitemeter – Portable Mössbauer spectrometer for rapid and nondestructive determination of austenite content
In this talk, we will describe an application of Mössbauer spectroscopy for determination of the austenite content in steels. This nuclear analytical method enables rapid determination of the austenite in the sample, i.e. within 10–20 min with sufficient accuracy. The standard regime of the analysis allows determining an austenite-to-ferrite ratio with high precision after several hours or a few days of measurement for laboratory research or quality control purposes. Backscattering Mössbauer spectroscopy allows nondestructive material analysis for the study of both large and small samples and can quantify the relative amount of the austenite and ferrite phases based on their totally different magnetic properties in a way, which is relatively independent of the shape, size, and orientation of the particles. One can “see” iron atoms, which have a different neighbourhood of alloying elements in the material.