Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
Brilliant synchrotron microprobes offer new opportunities for the analysis of stress/strain and deformation distributions in crystalline materials. Polychromatic x-ray microdiffraction is emerging as a particularly important tool because it allows for local crystal-structure measurements in highly deformed or polycrystalline materials where sample rotations complicate alternative methods; a complete Laue pattern is generated in each volume element intercepted by the probe beam. Although a straightforward approach to the measurement of stress/strain fields through white-beam Laue microdiffraction has been demonstrated, a comparable method for determining the plastic-deformation tensor has not been established. Here we report on modeling efforts that can guide automated fitting of plastic-deformation-tensor distributions in three dimensions.