Residual Stress Measurement by Electronic Speckle Pattern Interferometry

The existence of residual stresses affects both safety and lifetime. Thus the determination of these stresses is very important. The ESPI (Electronic Speckle Pattern Interferometry) and Hole- Drilling combined method seems to be an appropriate technique for their measurement. The theoretical considerations about the applicability of this method based on computations and preliminary experiments are presented. The experiments on specimens simulating known residual stress distributions were carried out on a professional apparatus. These results were compared and are in good accordance with other conventional methods. The proposed technique can be used for residual stress measurements

Characterization of residual stresses in heat treated Ti-6Al-4V forgings by machining induced distortion

To provide a solid base for improved material exploitation in dimensioning calculations it is necessary to determine the stress state in the part prior to service loading. In order to achieve higher material strength at elevated temperatures, the surface temperature gradient with respect to time has to be sufficiently high during heat treatment. This results in non-negligable residual stresses that can reduce the allowable load level upon which yielding occurs. For titanium alloys there are two common heat treatments, namely solution treatment and mill annealing. The latter one is the method of choice within the presented project. Mill annealing is utilized in order to significantly reduce the residual stresses in the parts without loosing much of the improved strength at elevated temperatures. Quantification of residual stresses is done by solving an inverse problem. From the measurement of distortion, induced by dividing the investigated part, the residual stress state can be calculated via analytical modeling or correlation with finite element models. To assure a minimum perturbation of the residual stress state during specimen production, dividing of the part is accomplished by electric discharge machining. The parts of interest are v-shaped prisms with a length of approximatly 450 mm and a thickness in the cross sectional area from about 20 mm to 45 mm. Figure 1(a) shows the forged part and 1(b) the dimensions of the cross section in millimeters as well as the material properties considered in the finite element model. The heat exchange between the part and the environment is modelled as heat transfer by convection superimposed with heat radiation. Since the parts are exposed to air during forging and heat treatment, the surface develops a strongly adhesive oxide layer, the so called alpha-case. After forging the parts are cooled in air and heat treated at a temperature of 720° C for a duration of 120 min. Subsequent air cooling and removing the alpha-case by shot peening and chemical treatment in a mixture of nitric and hydroflouric acid finishes the processing. The residual stress state in the parts is quantified through correlation of results obtained by finite element simulations and high precision deflection experiments. Experimental measuring errors are minimized by using the capability of the wire cutting machine to measure locations on the specimens with respect to the fixed machine coordinate system. A sophisticated design of cutting operations allows an analysis of the part without removing the fixture and hence makes it possible to achieve a very high accuracy of the displacement measurements of about 4 µm. The quality of the obtained results also depends on the finite element models describing the mechanics of the experimental investigations as precise as possible. Since numerical modeling of shot peening and chemical milling is rather complicated, the whole processing route of the shapes is simplified assuming that the individual contribution of all process steps to the residual stress state can be described by virtual heat transfer coefficients. The overall virtual heat transfer coefficient for the whole processing route is calculated from the linear superposition of the individual heat transfer coeffcients for each processing step. Detailed analysis of the obtained overall virtual heat transfer coefficients in comparison with experimentally obtained ones shows, that other processing steps besides the heat treatment considerably influence the residual stress state. In order to make the conducted simulation scheme applicable in practise, advanced finite element modeling techniques are developed. The experimentally derived deflection curves are correlated to the finite element results via a least square fit

Microstructure and temperature dependence of intergranular strains on diffractometric macroscopic residual stress analysis

Knowledge of the macroscopic residual stresses in components of complex high performance alloys is crucial when it comes to considering the safety and manufacturing aspects of components. Diffraction experiments are one of the key methods for studying residual stresses. However a component of the residual strain determined by diffraction experiments, known as microstrain or intergranular residual strain, occurs over the length scale of the grains and thus plays only a minor role for the life time of such components. For the reliable determination of macroscopic strains with the minimum influence of these intergranular residual strains , the ISO standard recommends the use of particular Bragg reflections. Here we compare the build up of intergranular strain of two different precipitation hardened IN 718 INCONEL 718 samples, with identical chemical composition. Since intergranular strains are also affected by temperature, results from room temperature measurement are compared to results at T 550 C. It turned out that microstructural parameters, such as grain size or type of precipitates, have a larger effect on the intergranular strain evolution than the influence of temperature at the measurement temperature of T 550 C. The results also show that the choice of Bragg reflections for the diffractometric residual stress analysis is dependent not only on its chemical composition, but also on the microstructure of the sample. In addition diffraction elastic constants DECs for all measured Bragg reflections are give