THE increasing interest now being exhibited in the influence of residual stresses on the life and service performance of machine parts prompted the present investigation.
Actually, the author is concerned here only with the thermal and transformation stresses that are developed in some heat-treating operations. Further, he discusses only the macroscopic type of stresses, that is, those that are distributed over the part as a whole, rather than the micro-stresses, which occur within a single grain or between several grains.