Study on the Residual Stress Distribution of Bi-Directional Cold Expansion Process Performed on Open Holes

Traditional unidirectional cold expansion technology usually generates non-uniform distribution of residual stress in the thickness direction of holes, which is harmful to the improvement of fatigue life of holes. The present work proposed a bi-directional cold expansion procedure to realize the homogenization of residual stress in the thickness direction of the cold expanded hole, thereby further improved antifatigue performance of cold expanded hole. For this aim, a series of finite element (FE) simulations were carried out to investigate the effectiveness of the bi-directional cold expansion procedure and optimize the process parameters. The results showed that the optimized bi-directional cold expansion process generated a more uniform distribution of residual circumferential compressive stress in the thickness direction comparing to the simplified bidirectional cold expansion process using a single mandrel. For the Aluminum alloy 7050-T7451, when the first interference level I₁ = 1.8%, the largest and the most uniform residual circumferential compressive stress was achieved, which suggested the best anti-fatigue performance.