ORIGINAL ARTICLE Finite element simulation and experimental investigation on the residual stress-related monolithic component deformation Xiaoming Huang & Jie Sun & Jianfeng Li Received: 29 April 2014 /Accepted: 20 October 2014 /Published online: 1 November 2014 # Springer-Verlag London 2014 Abstract The principal influence factors on the monolithic component deformation were investigated by finite element simulation simulation and experiment. Initial residual stress of the blank, machining-induced residual stress, and coupling action of these two effect factors were considered. To study the effect of blank initial residual stress on component defor- mation, chemical milling was used to remove the machining- induced residual stress on the machined surface of the com- ponents. The research results show that the initial residual stress in the blank was the main factor of deformation for three-frame monolithic beam, and the coupling action of the initial residual stress and machining-induced residual stresses aggravated the deformation. The deformation caused by ma- chining residual stress accounted for about 10 % of the total deformation of the component, and the deformation caused by the blank initial residual stress accounted for 90 % of the total deformation of the component. The finite element simulation results were compared with experimental results and found to be in good agreement. Keywords Monolithic component . Machining deformation . Machining-induced residual stress . Blank initial residual stress . Chemical milling 1 Introduction With increasing demand for improving airplane performance, large-sized monolithic components are widely used in order to reduce the airplane weight in aero industry [1]. However, when aircraft monolithic components were machined, more than 90 % of the initial material was removed away. Redistribution of the blank initial residual stress and the machining-induced residual stress on the surface of the com- ponents induced the thin-wall monolithic component defor- mation. It has been one of the most serious problems that the aircraft manufacturing industry had to face [2, 3]. The root causes of monolithic components came from the residual stresses which were composed of blank initial residual stress and machining-induced residual stress. Some researches show that pre-stretching technology was one of the effective methods to reduce the initial residual stress in the blank. However, it is difficult to eliminate the initial stress [4, 5]. Machining-induced residual stress is produced on the ma- chined surface of the workpiece due to the action of machining. Some investigations have been done for the aircraft mono- lithic component deformation. Jitender studied the milling thin-walled components distortion based on finite element method machining environment [6]. A finite element method named “house-building frame modeling” was used to predict the milling distortion of monolithic aero component under different milling conditions [7]. For the study, machining loads were used to replace the machining-induced residual stresses, and initial residual stresses were ignored. This as- sumption was harebrained to the actual situation. And some studies on deflection of thin-walled parts during the machin- ing were carried through [8–11]. The above investigations were mainly based on the finite element method and lack of experimental verification. Richter et al. [ 12 ] presented a methodology of predicting workpiece distortion based on the residual stress present in the workpiece, and the measured resid- ual stresses were used to calculate the shape distortion of high-speed machined parts. Assuming stresses induced X. Huang : J. Sun (*) : J. Li Key Laboratory of High Efficiency and Clean Mechanical Manufacture, Ministry of Education, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shandong University, 250061 Jinan, China e-mail: sunjie@sdu.edu.cn Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 77:1035–1041 DOI 10.1007/s00170-014-6533-9