The relevence of residual stresses in engineering components is being increasingly appreciated by modern engineers concerned with design and performance. The non-destructive evaluation of such stresses has provided a challange which has been addressed by the use of x-ray diffraction to characterize near-surface stresses. The extension of diffraction stress measurements to include neutron diffraction represents a major advance. Use of the penetrating power of neutrons is ideally suited to the determination of macrostress variation through thick components and of microstresses in composites and...