First-order correction to counter the effect of eccentricity on the hole-drilling integral method with strain-gage rosettes

The offset between the hole and the centre of the strain-gage rosette is unavoidable, although usually small, in the hole-drilling technique for residual stress evaluation. In this article, we revised the integral method described in the ASTM E837 standard and we recalculated the calibration coefficients. The integral method was then extended by taking into account the two eccentricity components, and a more general procedure was proposed including the first-order correction. A numerical validation analysis was used to consolidate the procedure and evaluate the residual error after implementing the correction. The values of this error resulted limited to a few percentage points, even for eccentricities larger than the usual experimental values. The narrow eccentricity limit claimed by the standard, to keep the maximum error lower than 10%, can now be considered extended by approximately a factor of 10, after implementing the proposed correcting procedure, proving that the effect of the eccentricity is mainly linear within a relatively large range.