Vibration and Vibratory Stress Relief - Historical Development, Theory and Practical Application

At the beginning of the 1960s awareness grew of the possibility of replacing stress relief by vibrations. This was because since the mid 1950s [1] so-called vibration devices had been marketed which were intended to lead to an extensive reduction of residual stresses. Systematic tests conducted with this in mind by Buhler and Pfalzgraf [2| as well as by Zeig [3] could however only give limited confirmation of the promised effect. Although it is agreed that a reduction of residual stresses is basically possible, it is also said that with complicated components it would hardly be possible to fulfill the necessary requirements, not even with vibration at natural frequency.