Fatigue life enhancement mechanism and lifetime prediction of AA6061-T6 open-holed sheet treated by electromagnetic driving dynamic cold expansion

Abstract

In this study, mechanisms of fatigue life enhancements of electromagnetic driving dynamic cold expansion (DCE) open holed sheets were investigated by testing fatigue life and obtaining residual stress fields experimentally and numerically. Furthermore, a fatigue life prediction method based on three-dimensional stress distributions was proposed. Results showed that DCE method extended higher fatigue life and produced more uniform residual stress along hole axial direction than static cold expansion (SCE) method. The differences in stress distribution led to different fatigue crack initiation and propagation modes of DCE and SCE specimens. Moreover, the predicted fatigue life results were in accordance with experimental data. • Dynamic cold expansion extended larger fatigue life for holed-sheets. • More uniform residual stress was induced by dynamic cold expansion. • Fatigue cracks propagated horizontally in dynamic cold expanded specimens. • Proposed method to predict fatigue life had good agreement with experiments.