Radiation Tests Of Aerospace Components At Elbe

The cw electron accelerator ELBE operates mainly in the beam energy range 6 to 32 MeV and beam current range 1μA to 1mA. For most experiments a thermionic gun is used as electron source. The cw electron pulse structure so as the pulse charge is realized by applying electrical pulses with specific amplitudes and frequencies on the grid of the gun. The standard cw operation frequency is 13 MHz but can be divided sequentially by the factor 2 down to 101 kHz. For very special pulse structures a so called single pulser module exist performing different patterns also with dark current suppression via a macro pulser gate. For evaluating the performance and hardness under irradiation of e.g. aerospace components much lower doses resp. currents lower than the μA range are required. Furthermore reproducible and stable doses in a specific area for consecutively radiation of samples are necessary. In the presentation the investigations and concepts used at ELBE for the irradiation of different aerospace components are described.