With the increasing complexity and cost of today’s products, a great number of measuring methods have to be used to get maximum information from each test. Finding reliable high performance instrumentation to record and investigate fundamental phenomena is a key to successful testing. Among the methods used to effectively diagnose high speed events, flash radiography is one of the most important. Flash radiography makes it possible to see what visible light cameras miss. Events that pass by in a blur or actually seem invisible are effectively stopped and unmasked.

Flash X-ray systems are usually characterized by their operating voltage, penetration of different materials and exposure time.

Operating voltage is the voltage that is applied to the x-ray tube. The operating voltage determines the energies of the x-ray photons emitted from the tube.

Penetration is a measure of the maximum thickness behind which x-ray images can be obtained. The penetration is specified for a given material and distance from the x-ray tube. Penetration and operating voltage are closely linked. A higher operating voltage gives a higher penerations.

A flash x-ray system has a fixed exposure time. The system is designed to give an exposure time short enough to effectively freeze even very high speed events.