Damage and fatigue analysis of AA7050-T7451 plate with cold expanded hole based on a micro-void evolution model

The ultimate tensile strength and fatigue life of plate with cold worked hole under high loading are always key designing parameters in engineering field. In this article, different cold expanded degrees (ranging from 1.69% to 11.11%) are applied to plate specimens with a central hole, made of 7050-T7451 aluminum alloy. The damage and fatigue properties are investigated by the three-dimensional finite element method with a user subroutine embedded into a void evolution model under complex stress states. The damage analysis indicates that plastic damage becomes critical when the cold expanded degree is larger than 7.14%, which does not suit for further service due to the loss of toughness. The cold expanded degree of 5.26% is identified as the best. It can be found that the fatigue life improves with the increased cold expanded degree. The small cold expanded degree leads to poor strengthening effect because of lacking sufficient residual stress, while large cold expanded degree makes micro-cracks emerge, which is beneficial to the increase in strengthening. All these results prove that the numerical analysis can accurately predict fatigue behavior of AA7050-T7451 plate based on our proposed approach, which is expected to be a powerful method in engineering field.