Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 February 2011
This paper describes experiments carried out at three neutron sources in which Bragg reflection peak profiles of samples of copper, nickel and iron were investigated as a function of plastic strain. All peaks were well fitted by Gaussian functions for true strains of upto 0.25. Peak widths of all samples were found to be simple power law functions of strain and independent of measurement direction. This suggests that use could be made of data gathered in standard residual elastic stress measurements to simultaneously estimate plastic strains.