Residual Stress Field Team

Hill Engineering is committed to providing high-quality residual stress measurement data to its customers, both in our laboratory and on-site. Our Residual Stress Field Team is equipped with the same knowledge and expertise as our laboratory team to meet the challenge of performing residual stress measurements in the field.

Our Residual Stress Field Team has the experience necessary to tailor each measurement approach to meet the unique needs of the customer and bring our world-class residual stress measurement capabilities to the place it matters most – the operational environment. Challenging measurement access, complex geometry, and applications requiring rapid turn time are just a few situations where our team and equipment excel, allowing us to assess both near-surface and bulk residual stress in components that are delicate, large, or otherwise unable to be sent to our laboratory for in-house testing.

A worker in a yellow safety vest and white hard hat inspecting a metal forging with measurement equipment in a factory setting. A laptop is in the foreground showing camera footage of the measurement site.
Hill Engineering’s Residual Stress Field Team can perform testing on-site for components that are too large to ship to our laboratory

From a quality control perspective, measurements performed in the field allow customers to get a detailed glimpse of their manufacturing process, as measurements can be carried out shortly before or after a critical step, such as heat treatment, all without having the component leaving the manufacturing line, saving time for the customer.

On-site measurements and services that are available through our field team include:

The Hill Engineering Residual Stress Field Team, with its ability to perform on-site residual stress measurements, is just one of the ways we offer flexible, precise, and high-quality residual stress testing to our customers. Their mobility, coupled with advanced technology, ensures that the science of engineering is not confined to laboratories but can thrive in real-world environments where innovation truly takes flight.

If you have any questions about the capabilities of our Residual Stress Field Team and how it can help your project, please contact us.

2024 Turbine Engine Technology Symposium (TETS)

Hill Engineering will be presenting at the 2024 Turbine Engine Technology Symposium in Dayton, OH, from September 9th through September 12th. We invite you to come see us. The TETS symposium gathers approximately 1,000 engineers, scientists, managers, and operation personnel from throughout the turbine engine community every two years to review and discuss the latest turbine engine technology advances. Hill Engineering’s presentation will include a summary of recent work related to residual stress measurement on bearings using the TrueSlot® method. The abstract text is presented below.
Continue reading 2024 Turbine Engine Technology Symposium (TETS)

On the Road with the Residual Stress Field Team

In the ever-evolving landscape of materials science and engineering, on-site solutions are an important component of residual stress testing. That’s why we at Hill Engineering have a dedicated residual stress field team, capable of traveling directly to customers’ locations in order to deliver the same precision and data quality of our in-house residual stress measurements.

Continue reading On the Road with the Residual Stress Field Team

TrueSlot® – near surface residual stress measurement

TrueSlot® is an innovative technique for measuring near-surface residual stress that is more reliable than conventional techniques.

TrueSlot® is a residual stress measurement technique for generating a profile of residual stress versus depth from the material surface. The stress computation is similar to slitting but offers more sensitivity near the surface due to the proximity of the strain gage.

Additionally, TrueSlot® is globally less invasive than slitting because the volume of removed material is localized to the surface and does not typically extend through most of the specimen thickness.

A solid model block with a long but thin slot cut out of the top.
A model of a completed TrueSlot® method measurement.

The physical application of TrueSlot® is like hole drilling, however instead of a shallow hole being milled into the body of a specimen containing residual stress, the material removed is a shallow slot. The strain released with each incremental slot depth is measured near the slot using a strain gage.

TrueSlot® is useful for

  • Production quality control applications
  • Applications requiring in-field measurements with portable equipment
  • Near-surface residual stress determination
  • Parts with large or complex geometry
  • Applications with challenging measurement access
  • Applications requiring rapid turn time

TrueSlot® was found to have better repeatability when compared with conventional x-ray diffraction.

A plot with depth and repeatability as the axis and two lines of data, one red, the other black. For most depths, the red line is higher than the black, signifying that XRD is less repeatable than slotting.
Results from the method repeatability study which found TrueSlot® to be a more repeatable measurement method than XRD

You can read about our repeatability study here.

TrueSlot® measurements are performed using our DARTTM system for automated residual stress measurement.