Residual stresses are of key importance across all industrial sectors where metals are used e.g. within the transportation and energy sectors.
Reliable evaluation of residual stresses plays a key role in quality control but is challenged by materials properties and technique limitations. Methods being widely adopted in industries for residual stress measurement are mostly destructive and/or surface-only. Non-destructive, bulk measurement techniques such as synchrotron X-ray and neutron diffraction have not yet gained a foothold in industry due to a lack of validation and standards. However, these techniques can be used to qualify new materials or processes to reduce the time-to-market. The European Activity for Standardisation of Industrial Residual Stress Characterization (EASI-STRESS) round robin activities aim at building the path to promote industrial access to these non-destructive stress characterization tools by harmonizing these techniques against more accepted lab techniques.

The goals of EASI-STRESS are:

• improving synchrotron x-ray and neutron diffraction-based residual stress characterisation tools for the needs of industrial use

• developing European-wide characterisation standards, protocols and data exchange procedures to facilitate the industrial use of the characterisation tools, e.g. through traceability and comparability

• strengthening European industrial uptake of the characterisation tools through open access to data and protocols, development of a test bed service and collaboration/synergy/standardization activities

• to secure a competitive advantage across European industrial sectors through optimised component design, reduced material use through reduced safety factors (material savings of around 15%) and an estimated cost-reduction of 5% in a EUR 350 billion market through shortened time-to-market, and increased lifetime.

In this contribution we introduce the EASI-STRESS goals and the project consortium, followed by a part of the results for residual stress determination in samples provided by the project partners, based on the data obtained at the participating research facilities, both neutron sources and synchrotrons.