10 Induction hardened discs with two initial hardness levels were used for exploring the influences of the variation of initial hardness as well as induction hardening (IH) recipes on the heat treatment distortions and hardening depth. The results show that for the same initial hardness, the larger the energy input, the higher the distortion size as well as the hardening depth. For a given induction hardening recipe, the increase in initial hardness leads to a deeper hardening depth but a smaller distortion. One disc was selected for the residual stress investigation in three orthogonal directions by neutron diffraction (ND). The corresponding stress-free lattice spacing do was measured from the same material using both ND and X-ray diffraction (XRD) methods. The ND results show that the variation of do in the hardened layer is significant and should be taken into account for stress calculation. However, regarding the core region, the do value measured by XRD is more reliable. Accordingly, a combination of the ND-measured do profiles in the hardened layer and the XRD-measured do value in the core was adopted for the determination of residual stress distributions. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.