Numerical investigation of the effect of hole reaming on fatigue life by cold expansion

The reaming process of the 6061 aluminum alloy plate after cold expansion with split sleeve was simulated by finite element (FE) method based on Abaqus/CAE, the relationship between the reaming depths and the distribution of residual stress fields is obtained by analysis. The fatigue lives of the plate under different reaming depths were calculated by using the fatigue analysis software FE-SAFE, and verified by fatigue tests. The results show that reaming after expansion will increase the residual compressive stress at the hole edge on the entrance surface. In addition, the fatigue life of the specimens increases with the increase of the reaming depth, and the best fatigue gain of the specimen is obtained when the reaming depth of 0.5 mm.

Quantifying Hole-Edge Crack of Bolt Joints by Using an Embedding Triangle Eddy Current Sensing Film

Hole-edge crack quantification of bolt joints is critical for monitoring and estimating structural integrity of aircraft. The paper proposes a new triangle eddy current sensor array for the purpose of increasing the level of quantifying hole-edge crack parameters, especially, the crack angle. The new senor array consists of triangular coils instead of planar rectangular coils. The configuration of the novel sensor array, including the excitation current directions and the excitation winding shape, is optimized by simulation. The ability of the proposed sensing film to identify the crack parameters has been verified by finite element simulations and experiments. Results shows that triangular coils with same current directions in circumferentially adjacent coils and opposite current directions in axially adjacent coils achieve better performance in sensor linearity and resolution compared to rectangular coils. In addition, it has also been proved that the sensing film has a good potential to identify the crack depth and length.

A new interleaving eddy current array-based sensing film for fatigue crack quantification of bolted joints

Fatigue crack quantification for bolted joints attracts much attention to determine the structural integrity for aircraft structures. In this paper, a new sensing film with interleaving eddy current array is proposed to evaluate the parameters of the hole-edge crack for single- or multiple-lap bolted joints. In this sensing film, the exciting layer is one coil throughout the hole wall which consists of a one-dimension rectangle coil array in the axial direction connecting in series, while the sensing layer is made up of two interleaving layers with a two-dimensional sensing coil array distributed in the circumferential and axial directions for each layer. Finite element simulation is conducted to study the effect of different crack parameters on the induced voltage of sensing coils. Simulation results reveal that the sensing film has no blind angle of crack detection but a strong capability of quantifying the crack angle, and the arctangent value of the ratio between interleaving coils can be used for estimating the crack angle. After the crack angle is estimated, induced voltages of sensing coils at this angle may be used to track the crack propagation in the axial or radial directions of the bolt hole. Experiments are conducted to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the new sensing film to monitor the angle, depth, and length of the hole-edge crack of bolted joints.

An Analytical Model for Predicting the Stress Intensity Factor of Single-Hole-Edge Crack in Diffusion Bonding Laminates with Preset Unbonded Area

The diffusion bonding titanium alloy laminates with preset unbonded area (DBTALPUA) compared with other titanium alloy structural forms has good damage tolerance performance and designability. It is important to fast get the damage estimation of the DBTALPUA with crack. The stress intensity factor (SIF) of the crack is an effective indicator to give the damage estimation. In order to get the SIF fast, this paper proposed an analytical model to calculate SIF for single hole-edge crack in DBTALPUA with hole under tension loading. Comparison of the results obtained through this analytical model and numerical simulation illustrated that the analytical model can rapidly predict the SIF with fine precision.

Hole-Edge Corrosion Expansion Monitoring Based on Lamb Wave

Corrosion is a critical issue for engineered metallic components in mechanical and aerospace industries. Due to the complexity of aerospace aluminum alloy structure, corrosion is particularly tend to occur and expand in stress concentration areas, such as the edge of a hole, which causes the overall structure to be more likely to fail. In this paper, a Lamb wave-based active sensing method with improved sensors network was used to detect the hole-edge corrosion expansion. A0 wave packet of Lamb wave is extracted from signals, and two damage factors are used as characteristics of the signals. Probabilistic imaging algorithm is used to imaging and quantify the hole-edge corrosion area. Five corrosion extension tests show that the proposed method can effectively locate and quantify the hole-edge corrosion damage expansion of a single-hole structure; furthermore, the normalized amplitude damage index and phase change damage index can be used to predict hole-edge corrosion expansion effectively.

Tensile behaviors of layer-to-layer 2.5D angle-interlock woven composites with/without a center hole at various temperatures

The temperature-dependent mechanical behaviors of open-hole composite plates are essential for composite design and structures. Here, tensile experiments of shallow straight-link-shaped 2.5D woven composites (abbr. 2.5DWC) with/without a center hole are first conducted at different temperatures (20 °C, 180 °C and 240 °C). Failure modes are examined by scanning electron microscope (SEM). Thermal property of QY8911-IV resin is investigated by DMA analysis. It is noted for samples without the center hole that with the increase of temperature, the tensile stress–strain curves exhibit a linear response until that a slight nonlinearity at the end stage. The strength retention rates at 180 °C and 240 °C are totally equal. For the open-hole samples, it is interestingly found that the strength retention rates are higher than that of samples without the hole at 180 °C, resulting from the stress concentration accommodation and fiber-dominated failure mode. Even at 240 °C, there is no necking phenomenon for all the failed samples, but more broom-like damage extent is observed in the cross-section. Due to the primary load-bearing warp yarns and hole-edge stress concentration, obvious pull-out warp yarns emerge near the hole edge.