The effect of cold expansion on the fatigue behaviour of 2024-t3 aluminium alloy

Abstract EN

The use of riveting as assembly technique, especially in the aeronautical construction, requires the implementation of several holes in aluminium alloy sheets, which leads to an inhomogeneous stress and strain fields distribution and to a stress localization in the drilled zones which will affect the fatigue life of 2024-T3 aluminium alloy.

Cold expansion is largely employed to obtain improvement in fatigue life of rivet holes.

This paper presents the results of experimental work whose main objective was to evaluate the effects of the residual stress field caused by the cold expansion of the hole on improving the fatigue life and on the crack initiation and propagation in 2024-T3 aluminium alloy.

Xray diffraction is used to measure the residual stresses resulting from the cold expansion on the hole edge on both specimen faces.