Study of residual stress distribution in advanced materials

The general approach for taking into account the processing induced residual stress in mechanical design and the structure health monitoring involves research in three fields: process development, residual stress determination and numerical tools. The destructive (incremental hole drilling method) and non-destructive (x-ray, neutron diffraction, ultrasonic) methods have been combined in order to evaluate precisely the residual stresses distribution. Some new results concerning the new development of the optical methods for the in depth residual stress distribution measurement will be shown. A special attention is paid to residual stress induced in metal and polymer matrix composite materials. Then the residual stresses obtained by different techniques of thermal spraying which are widely used in the biomedical, automobile, aerospace industries will be presented. Different coating systems (Zirconia, Cr2O3, WC-Co, NiCrAlY) manufactured by different processes (HVOF, APS, VPS, ATCPS) will be shown. The residual stress induced by a novel surface mechanical attrition treatment (SMAT) will be also presented. Significant enhancements in mechanical properties of the nanostructured surface layer in metallic materials and the potential applications for large structure such as aircraft, nuclear plant and bridge repair will be analyzed and presented. ©2009 Society for Experimental Mechanics Inc.