Stress measurement in coarse grained material with high-resolution X-ray beams

A method is proposed by which stresses can be measured in a polycrystalline material with a grain size comparable to the size of the probing X-ray, for instance if the X-ray is a high resolution synchrotron beam. The solution for the problem is the so-called matrix method together with an approximation to the components of the tensor F(ψ,φ,hkl), the so-called X-ray elastic factors.

► A method is presented for stress measurement with a high-resolution X-ray beam. ► Any (arbitrary) distribution of measurement directions (φ/ψ) is allowed. ► This is made possible using the matrix method for the stress calculation. ► The complete orientation information of the reflecting grains is not needed. ► The simulation of a measurement strongly supports the validity of the method.