Residual Stress Relief in the Aluminium Alloy 7075

Abstract

The residual stresses in heat treated 7075 aluminium alloy blocks have been characterised using two neutron diffraction strain scanning instruments. The influence of uniaxial cold compression (1-10%) on relieving the residual stress has been determined. Increasing the magnitude of cold compression from 1 to 10% has been shown to have a beneficial effect on the residual stress distribution by reducing the range between the maximum and minimum residual stresses. The effect of over aging 7075 on residual stress has also been characterised using neutron diffraction and this was found to reduce the residual stress by 25-40%. A relationship between {311} peaks widths and amount of cold compression was also observed.