Introduction to the Prestress Engineering Approach

Much research has been conducted recently in the field of residual stress. This article is a review of different studies carried out in our laboratory. The first part deals with residual stress measurement techniques and the overall necessity to combine destructive (incremental hole drilling method) and non-destructive (x-ray and neutron diffraction) methods in order to precisely evaluate the residual stress distribution. Some new results concerning optical methods will also be discussed. The second part presents the different models used to predict residual stress induced by different types of processing. The third part presents residual stress produced by thermal spray-coating technology which is widely used in the biomedical, automobile, aerospace, textile, and power industries. The last part shows the effect of residual stress on fatigue behavior. A model based on the finite element method for predicting the relaxation of residual stresses will be presented. Finally, prediction of fatigue life taking residual stress into account using the finite element method will be discussed. A new approach to concurrent engineering applied to the design of mechanical components with residual and applied stress consideration will be presented.