A novel method of cold expansion which creates near-uniform compressive tangential residual stress around a fastener hole

A recognized way of improving the fatigue resistance of a fastener hole is to introduce compressive tangential residual stress around it. This can be achieved by using a cold expansion method in which an oversized pin or ball is forced through the hole to produce a local plastic region surrounded by an elastic one. Once the pin or ball is removed allowing the elastic region to spring back it results in compressive tangential residual stress around the hole. In practise, however, it is found that such a cold expansion method creates a non‐uniform residual stress distribution through the plate thickness and even tensile residual stress can be created at the entrance and exit faces. In this paper a new method of cold expansion is proposed. It uses a tapered pin with a mating tapered split sleeve and creates an almost uniform compressive residual stress around the hole as shown by FE method. Also, fatigue tests were carried out to verify that the method does significantly improve fatigue life. Finally the tangential residual stress distribution and fatigue life improvement of this new method were compared with those of a well‐established cold expansion method and it was shown that the new method is more efficient in improving fatigue life.