Bulk Residual Stress Measurement for Aerospace Applications

Bulk residual stress in jet engine components can be either beneficial or detrimental to the manufacturing process, service life, and damage tolerance. Due to the high safety standards in the aerospace industry, precise control and accurate monitoring of bulk residual stress remain challenging yet critical tasks for many stakeholders.

Among the various destructive mechanical residual stress measurement techniques, the relatively new “Contour” method has advanced rapidly and gained significant attention in the field over the past decade. The two-dimensional stress maps it produces provide valuable information to structural engineers and failure analysts, making it one of the primary tools used at Pratt & Whitney to validate process models. Additional measurement techniques, such as deep hole drilling (DHD) and primary slice release (PSR) biaxial mapping, are also employed to validate and supplement contour data.

In this presentation, we will introduce residual stress measurement data for a nickel turbine disk and an aluminum fan blade, obtained using various bulk residual stress measurement techniques.