Assessment of mechanical loads based on surface integrity analysis of machined components

Today, the capability of machined components to provide information on mechanical loads during their usage phase is not being assessed. However, it is well known that especially residual stresses change due to mechanical load. An approach is presented, how this effect can be utilized to determine the mechanical loads a component has been exposed to. To enable the identification, more than one property has to be used to identify the combination of load stress amplitude and number of load cycles. The presented paper focuses on the analysis of precision and reliability of the determined solutions.