X-ray measurement of residual stresses in laser surface melted Ti-6Al-4V alloy

In this paper, we report on the residual stresses in laser surface melted Ti-6Al-4V, determined using X-ray diffraction methods. The principal result is that there is an increase in the transverse residual stress with each successive, overlapping laser track. The result can be used to explain the observation of crack formation in overlapping tracks but not necessarily in single tracks produced under identical processing conditions.