ASM Handbook, Vol. 25A

Residual Stress Fundamentals
Residual stress wields dual potential: it can enhance component performance or trigger unexpected issues. The description highlights the importance of understanding and managing residual stresses in design, guiding engineers to harness these forces to comply with structural specifications for innovative and advanced applications.
Residual stress can be both an engineering attribute to enhanced component capabilities, and a feature that can result in detrimental component behaviors and unintended consequences. This potential of dual positive or negative impact on engineered components and products is a major factor why understanding and deploying residual stresses in engineering design is so critical. Design and structural analysis engineers must understand the potential of unintended residual stresses and/or understand how to incorporate engineered residual stresses that can enable the component to meet design intent for advanced applications.