scope:

A review of the published literature on the mechanisms responsible for the generation of residual stress is presented, along with an up-to;date state-of-the-art summary of the methods utilized for the measurement of the distribution and magnitude of residual stresses in welded components. These presentations are followed by the results obtained from experiments designed to provide the definitive information necessary to compare the results of the three most common techniques applied to weldments. In these investigations residual stress distributions were determined for as-welded and stress relieved disks of Incone1 600, Inconel X-750 and Rene 41. The primary method used to determine the residual stress distributions was the Sachs boring-out technique. However, for Inconel 600 the magnitude and distribution of the residual stresses were determined by two additional techniques: (1) the holedrilling method and (2) the plugging-out method. An analysis of the experimental results obtained for Inconel 600 was used to evaluate the three techniques. From the results it was shown that the Sachs method predicts values of the maximum residual stress which are considerably greater than the adjusted room temperature 0.2% offset yield strength of the base material and that the holedrilling and plugging-out methods yield data indicating the magnitude of the maximum residual stress in the welded disk is approximately equal to the adjusted 0.2% offset tensile yield strength. The adjusted yield strength is the value of the uniaxial yield strength corrected for biaxial elastic restraints and the weld solidification substructure