Residual stress measurement on the butt-welded area by electronic speckle pattern interferometry

Background: Residual stress always exists on any kind of welded area. This residual stress can cause the welded material to crack or fracture. For many years, the hole-drilling method has been widely used for measuring residual stress. However, this method is destructive. Nowadays, electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI) can be used to measure residual stress with or without the hole-drilling method. ESPI is an optical nondestructive testing methods that use the speckle effect. Mechanical properties can be measured by calculation of the phase difference by the variation of temperature, pressure, or loading force. Methods: In this paper, the residual stress on the butt-welded area is measured by using ESPI with a suggested numerical calculation. Two types of specimens are prepared. Type I is made of pure base metal part and type II has a welded part at the center. These specimens are tensile tested with a material test system. At the same time, the ESPI system was applied to this test. Results: From the results of ESPI, the elastic modulus and the residual stress around the welded area can be calculated and estimated. Conclusion: With this result, it is confirmed that the residual stress on the welded area can be measured with high precision by ESPI.