Residual Stress Measurement Techniques: A Review

Material surface integrity enhancement has been a trending topic in the recent years. The major factors such as surface roughness, hardness, microstructure and residual stresses are essential for surface integrity studies. Among all these factors, residual stresses are gaining more interest due to their complexity and no clarity over the precision of their measurement methods. Residual stresses are complex and can hugely affect the material due to their tensile – compressive nature. For instance, tensile residual stresses can harm the material performance, while compressive residual stresses can improve it. Therefore, it is very important to analyse these stresses and in the past decade, there has been significant progress in their measurement methods. This paper attempts to present a detailed review on various residual stress measurement methods that are in practice and provide an overview of the advancements in this area. Each method is presented, analysed and discussed in this review.