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Welding residual stresses cause buckling or brittle fractures in welded
structures so that estimation of residual stress is required to protect the structures.
In previous works, an identification method by thermo-elastic boundary element
analysis was proposed to estimate the magnitude and the distribution of the
residual stress in butt-welded plate from a few measured data. The method can
also estimate the maximum stress value at the welding line, where the X-ray
diffraction method is inapplicable. The validity of the method was examined
using numerical simulations while experiments were not carried out. This paper
investigates the effectiveness of the method using experimentally measured
stresses in butt-welded plate. The estimated stresses were in good agreement with
those measured in the experiments when the measurement points were at suitable
locations. The maximum residual stresses were estimated using the stresses
measured near the line by the X-ray diffraction method.