Experimental Analysis of Cold Work in an Overlap Joint of Aluminum Alloy for a Wing-to-wing Assembly

Abstract

Cold work is a method used to increase the fatigue life in aeronautical components, through the residual stress creation. This is a result of grain hardening on the discontinuity area. Traditional cold work approaches are largely applied on aeronautical industry but demand excessive time to be completed. Recent studies have shown that the cold work caused by the fastener riveting, along with drilling class changes presented similar or superior results than the traditional cold work forms for structural joints. Therefore, this experiment was performed using Finite Element Model of software CATIA®, literature comparison, and fatigue cycling, to prove that cold work applied on a special drilling class with Pull-Stem pins in an overlap joint – similar to a wing-to-wing assembly of an EMBRAER aircraft – could result in the expected fatigue life improvement, in comparison to the same joint with Hi-Lite pins.