Welding, as a traditional joining process of metal components, plays an important role in industrial manufacturing and other fields. The welding residual stress produced in the welding process has adverse effects on the stability and service life of welded components, and is one of the main causes of stress corrosion, fatigue, fracture and other failures. Therefore, measuring and analyzing the residual stress in welded structures has important research significance and practical value for manufacturing. Modal test method has been widely used in welding residual stress testing because of its advantages of fast, non-destructive and low cost. In order to better apply modal test method to welding residual stress testing, based on domestic and foreign research achievements, this paper summarizes the research progress of domestic and foreign scholars on the application of modal test method to measure welding residual stress and deformation, summarizes the achievements made in recent decades in the testing principle, numerical simulation and test analysis of modal test method to measure welding residual stress, and summarizes their advantages and disadvantages. And look forward to its development trend.