An engineering research program has been conducted at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) in order to determine the thermomechanical conditions that lead to crack formation in GlidCop®, a material commonly used to fabricate X-ray absorbers at X-ray synchrotron facilities. This dispersion-strengthened copper alloy is a proprietary material and detailed technical data of interest to the synchrotron community is limited. The results from the research program have allowed new design criteria to be established for GlidCop® X-ray absorbers based upon the thermomechanically induced fatigue behavior of the material. X-ray power from APS insertion devices was used to expose 30 GlidCop® samples to 10000 thermal loading cycles each under various beam power conditions, and all of the samples were metallurgically examined for crack presence/geometry. In addition, an independent testing facility was hired to measure temperature-dependent mechanical data and uniaxial mechanical fatigue data for numerous GlidCop® samples. Data from these studies support finite element analysis (FEA) simulation and parametric models, allowing the development of a thermal fatigue model and the establishment of new design criteria so that the thermomechanically induced fatigue life of X-ray absorbers may be predicted. It is also demonstrated how the thermal fatigue model can be used as a tool to geometrically optimize X-ray absorber designs.
Keywords: GlidCop®; design criteria; front-ends; high heat load; photon absorbers; thermal fatigue life; transient non-linear FEA.