Review on residual stress and its effects on manufacturing of aluminium alloy structural panels with typical multi-processes

In the aerospace industry, integrated aluminium alloy plates and stiffened panels with high accuracy and performance attract significant interest. To manufacture these panels as integrity with high accuracy, multiple processes need to be utilised, such as machining, welding and forming. During the whole manufacturing chain, residual stresses can be generated and redistributed in the components among different processes. The residual stress would significantly affect the shapes and properties of the final products. Currently, these great effects are not well considered in the design and manufacturing processes. This paper aims to draw a general understanding of the residual stress generated in the pre-manufacturing processes and its effects on subsequent manufacturing processes. The mechanisms and distributions of residual stresses generated in typical pre-manufacturing processes of structural panels, including machining, welding and additive manufacturing (AM), are firstly summarised. The detailed effects of generated residual stresses on distortion and application properties in subsequent manufacturing processes are then concluded. In addition, current methods developed for the investigation of residual stress effect in multi-processes manufacturing are critically reviewed, including experimental, analytical, finite element (FE) and machine learning methods. Furthermore, the future development trend of methods for residual stress consideration and control in the design of manufacturing processes is summarised, providing comprehensive guidance to achieve the high accurate manufacturing of aluminium alloy structural components.