Electron beam (EB) welding is a well-established and frequently used joining method within the aerospace industry. A numerical model, using a commercial weld-simulation package Sysweld, has been created to better understand the formation and evolution of the distortions during the welding and subsequent cooling processes. The numerical model calculates many different fields of data over the component, including.the formation of plastic strains, residual stresses and thermal fields. Whilst the model has been validated on a number of outputs to date using instrumented experiments, the magnitudes of residual stress left within the component have not been measured for a real weld. The present investigation would offer an excellent method of firstly validating the numerical modelling, and also to further understand the potentially life-limiting residual stresses present after EB welding.