Cold expansion technology of connection holes in aircraft structures: A review and prospect

As one kind of key anti-fatigue manufacture approaches with simplicity and effectiveness, the hole cold expansion technology satisfies the increasing needs for light weight and durability of aircraft structures. It can improve the fatigue life by several times at no additional weight conditions. The hole cold expansion technology has been widely used in manufacturing and repairing of both fighters and commercial aircraft, and has become a research hotspot in the strengthening technology. In recent years, hole cold expansion process methods, residual stress around expanded holes, the behavior of fatigue crack initiation and propagation, and fatigue lives after cold expansion are researched extensively through lots of experiments and finite element simulations. A review on the hole cold expansion technology research status in the last twenty years is presented in this paper. Via the analysis of the current characteristics and defects of the hole cold expansion technology, combined with the actual needs in design and manufacture of new-generation aircraft, development trends and novel research directions are presented for realizing precise and high-efficiency anti-fatigue manufacture. (C) 2015 The Authors.