Advances in Neutron Diffraction for Engineering Residual Stress Measurements

The increasing awareness amongst engineers and designers, of the significance of residual stresses in influencing the useful lifetimes of engineering components, has resulted in more demanding expectations being placed on the methods used to obtain these stresses. The neutron diffraction technique is emerging as the most attractive measuring method as the residual stresses can usually be obtained non-destructively to depths of up to 40 mm in some common engineering materials. Although it is a relatively new technique it has been used to measure the residual stresses in a range of engineering materials introduced by a wide variety of manufacturing processes such as welding, quenching, machining, shot peening, cold hole expansion and autofrettage.