Application of quenching to create highly triaxial residual stresses in type 316H stainless steels

It has been proposed that highly triaxial residual stress fields may be sufficient to promote creep damage in thermally aged components, even in the absence of in-service loads. To test this proposal, it is necessary to create test specimens containing highly triaxial residual stress fields over a significant volume of the specimen. This paper presents results from an experimental and numerical study on the generation of triaxial residual stresses in stainless steel test specimens. Spray water quenching was used to generate residual stress fields in solid cylinders and spheres made from type 316H stainless steel. A series of finite element simulations and measurements were carried out to determine how process conditions and specimen dimensions influenced the resulting residual stress distributions. The results showed that highly compressive residual stresses occurred around the surfaces of the cylinders and spheres and tensile residual stresses occurred near the centre. Surface residual stresses were measured using the incremental centre hole-drilling technique, while internal residual stresses were measured using neutron diffraction. Overall there was good agreement between the predicted and measured residual stresses. The level of triaxiality was found to be very sensitive to the heat transfer coefficient, and could be controlled by adjusting the cooling conditions and changing the dimensions of the steel samples. This differed from other processes, such as welding and shot-peening, where the magnitudes and distributions of residual stresses are ill-defined and the volume of material subjected to a triaxial residual stress state is relatively small.