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<h2>Commercial Applications</h2> <p>In addition to the lively community of Canadian and international scientists using NRU, the National Research Council at Chalk River has an initiative called Applied Neutron Diffraction for Industry (ANDI). This is a means for industrial users to access the experimental facilities on a fee for service basis. ANDI clients pay for beam time at the reactor, the results of the experimental work remain their property and are not published in the open literature. </p> <p>The steel-maker IPSCO took advantage of the ANDI initiative to open up a substantial new market and at the same time improve the safety and cost of Canada's highway bridges. </p> <p>IPSCO Inc. is based in Regina, SK with facilities in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and the U.S. They are a world leader in the development of high pressure gas transmission linepipe and ultra high strength plate steels. They have a small R&D department, but rely heavily on research conducted in partnership with universities and government laboratories such as CANMET and NRC-Chalk River. </p> <p>Recently IPSCO built the world's largest temper leveling line in Scarborough, Ontario. This facility produces longer, wider and thicker steel plate from coils than previously possible. One application for such plates is in the construction of highway bridges. Unfortunately, plate from coils had long been prohibited from use in bridges in Canada because of concerns that the stresses remaining from traditional processing (known as residual stresses) may cause a failure of the girder. It was suspected that temper leveling altered the stresses in such a way as to eliminate this concern, but there was no proof. The only means to accurately measure the stresses through the full thickness of the steel was neutron diffraction. Scientists at NRC in Chalk River designed and performed the experiments that proved temper leveling eliminated the potentially harmful residual stresses. </p> <p>Based on this evidence, the Steel Structures Subcommittee of the Canadian Standards Association recommended temper leveled steel plate be approved for use. It has recently been published in Canada's first truly national Highway Bridge Design Code, CAN/CSA-S6-00. The use of temper leveled plates for bridge girders will reduce their cost and increase the safety and longevity of Canada's highway bridges. </p> <p>Following that success a subsequent larger scale project with NPMR in cooperation with McGill University has allowed IPSCO to further optimize the temper leveling process. Helping them create a product that performs more consistently than ever before, improving their edge in a highly competitive area of business. </p>
