Measurement of Bulk Residual Stress Distributions in Thick-section Components using the Contour Method

Abstract

Residual stresses are known to play a significant role in many material failure processes (e.g., fatigue, fracture, and stress corrosion cracking). For example, pressure vessels typically contain welded joints. In many cases these welded joints are large (e.g., traveling around the entire circumference), contain significant amounts of residual stress, have reduced material properties, and contain defects. For these and other reasons, the welded joints tend to be critical locations in terms of design and performance of pressure vessels. In the aerospace industry, where large integral components are often machined from a single piece of material, bulk residual stresses can lead to significant distortion of the machined part. Thus, the ability to accurately quantify residual stresses through measurement is an important engineering tool.