Study of Residual Stress Distribution in a Stainless Steel Bead-on-Plate Simulation Benchmark Sample

This paper summarizes the results of a neutron diffraction study of a single weld bead on a rectangular austenitic stainless steel plate. The measurement was carried out at SALSA, the engineering strain scanner at the ILL, Grenoble, France. The work has been carried out under the European NET project, and is a round robin exercise of residual stress simulation and validation benchmark in a stainless steel bead-on-plate (BOP) weldment. A monochromatic beam of wavelength 1.494 Å was used and the lattice spacing of {311} crystallographic plane was measured. The principal strain measured in the plate was corrected by measuring small cube sample of 3×3×3 mm3 as stress free reference. The measured strain was then used to calculate the principal stress distribution. Finally, the measured strain was compared with the strain measured in a similar specimen in a pulsed neutron source by the time-of-flight (TOF) technique.