Evaluation methods for residual stress measurement in large components

Abstract

Residual stresses play a pivotal role in determining the durability and service life of the component. Processes such as heating, machining, mechanical treatment and even the manufacturing process itself, develop the residual stresses in a component. These initial residual stresses rejig themselves depending on different loading conditions such as rotation, mechanical or thermal loadings. Furthermore, having categorical knowledge about the residual stress field across the whole component is imperative in comprehending how residual stresses impact failure. So, it is vital to determine the stress distribution throughout the component to mitigate the catastrophic failure. This is easy to obtain in case of smaller components due to their small cross-sections, but the same becomes daunting when it comes to large components because of greater depths at which these stresses reside and also of their large cross-sections. Though there are several techniques to measure the residual stresses in large components but work only up to certain depths which restricts there use to specific part dimensions which in turn necessitate to decide the best method for determining the complete stress distribution in large components. Thus, this review aims to elucidate and classify various residual stress measurement methods on the basis of their operating range, principle and technical feasibility with manufacturing process used to manufacture the large engineering components.