Residual stress study by neutron diffraction in the Charpy specimens reconstructed by various welding methods

The investigation of welding residual stress is very important for nuclear industry since it can considerably affect the structural integrity of various components and products and their lifetime. In order to evaluate the applicability of various welding methods the residual stress in test Charpy specimens welded by various techniques were analysed using high resolution neutron diffraction. The experiments show that the level of residual stress in welds can be quite high and this fact should be considered when choosing an appropriate welding technique. Key words: neutron diffraction, residual stress, welding