The effect of machining defects on the fatigue behaviour of the Al7050 alloy

Abstract

During the High Speed Machining (HSM) of aircraft components, geometrical defects, such as mismatches or chatters, can be created. To obtain a high surface quality, an expensive manual grinding operation is systematically done to remove these defects. The aim of this study is to identify the impact of HSM defects on the fatigue behaviour of the aluminium alloy Al7050. After listing and reproducing the most frequently observed surface defects, fatigue tests are conducted under fully reversed plane bending loads. Investigations carried out in previous work showed that residual stresses and the strain hardening introduced by machining under these conditions can be neglected. Therefore, only the geometric aspect of the surface integrity is considered in this study. The results show that the fatigue strength decreases only when the surface roughness is significantly degraded. It is also pointed out that manual grinding allows the effect of the machining defects to be removed from the fatigue behaviour. In order to predict the influence of the surface condition on the fatigue behaviour, a numerical approach based on the real surface topology is also developed. Crack initiation sites that are numerically identified are in agreement with experimental results. Numerical simulation results are compared to the predictions of different fatigue criteria from the literature and discussed over a wide range of surface defects.