Articles techniques et présentations

We have developed a small environmental chamber to expose a sample to adjustable climate conditions. This climate chamber will be used as sample environment for small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) experiments. SANS is a favorable measuring method, to explore structural changes on the length scale between 1 and 500 nanometer during water intake or dissipation, for example in fuel cell membranes. The climate condition is determined by temperature, pressure and humidity. Our device is geared to dynamic climate changes which is necessary to inspect structural transformations in the sample with good time resolution. Simulation tasks were: to calculate the stationary temperature in the sample chamber in order to verify our design decisions, to equalize heating up and cooling down processes for improving dynamic temperature control, and to investigate the fluid flow especially the pressure distribution and to simulate the humidity distribution for proving that no water condensation in any used climate condition occurs.