| Abstract: | Residual stress fields from cold expansion have been widely used to extend the fatigue life of aircraft structures. However, the spatial statistical character of these residual stress fields has not been established and has not been incorporated in current analysis methods. The objective of this study was to establish a spatial statistical method to quantify the residual stress field around a cold expanded hole. A framework called the Spatial Analysis of Residual Stress (SpARS) was developed utilizing spatial correlation, response surface modelling techniques and statistical resampling methods to characterize the residual stress field. Our results showed that tolerance bounds on residual stress can be quantified using this method. We also demonstrated the SpARS method using recently published round robin case studies. The newly developed model will be useful for aircraft structural fatigue crack growth analyses to incorporate residual stress fields for extending inspection intervals for fatigue and fracture critical structures. |
