Influences in the residual stress computation by the contour method when a partial part of the measured cross section is applied as contour

The contour method has been used for the residual stress analysis of whole cross sections affected by the cutting process. In some cases, the evaluation in a localized region is mandatory and it requires the measurement of a partial part of the cross section laying far from the traditional applications of the contour methodology. This research is aimed to analyze the feasibility of computing residual stresses in a reduced area of the cross section after the application of the traditional contour method but with a reduced area as loading. The contours used for analysis were numerically simulated by 2D Legendre distributions. The contours related to the whole cross section, after cutting, were used to create a set of contours associated with reduced regions of the complete cross section. The whole as well as the partial regions were used in the contour simulations to evaluate the influence on the computed stress generated by the loading of only a part of the area. A real cross section was measured with white light interferometry. This measurement was analyzed with the proposed methods for reduced cross sections. The comparative analysis of the results for all conditions showed that the stresses were computed with a relative error lower than 10% for 75% of the evaluated area. The presented results showed that the feasibility to compute stresses in one portion of a cross section examined by the contour method is possible having good concordance in the analyzed region. This is a suitable solution in cases where local and specific features are present in the cross section allowing to analyze the featured region with a detailed resolution.