A study of oil lubrication in a rotating engine using stroboscopic neutron imaging

Even at modern high-flux neutron sources, the required exposure time for one neutron radiography image with high counting statistics is in the order of 1 s. Continuous time-resolved imaging of objects in motion is thus very limited in time resolution and signal dynamics. However, repetitive motions can be recorded with a stroboscopic technique: A triggerable accumulating detector is triggered for many identical time windows of the cyclic motion until sufficient fluence is accumulated for one image. The image is read out, the delay for the time window is shifted and the recording repeated until a complete movie of the cyclic motion can be put together. We report about a study of oil flux in a running, electrically driven BMW engine out of current production