Research on the effect of manufacturing processes on the fatigue life of TC4 fasteners

Abstract TC4 fasteners have the characteristics of high specific strength and yield ratio, excellent high and low temperature performance, corrosion resistance, etc., and are widely used in many fastener fields, including aerospace. In long-term use, fatigue fracture has become the main failure mode of TC4 bolt fasteners. The common manufacturing processes of TC4 fasteners include shot peening, bottom corner rolling pressure, anodizing and molybdenum disulphide coating, etc. At present, few researchers have studied the effect of the stress level of the manufacturing process on the fatigue life of TC4 fasteners. Therefore, this paper designs the process and parameter influence test from the perspective of different manufacturing processes, and analyses the fatigue test results to reveal the influence mechanism of different processes on the fatigue life of TC4 fasteners. The research results show that the increase of residual compressive stress greatly improves the fatigue strength of fasteners, the shot peening process improves the fatigue life of TC4 fasteners by increasing the residual stress of fasteners, and rolling pressure also increases the surface residual compressive stress. However, it is necessary to find suitable rolling parameter values, and anodizing reduces the residual compressive stress of fasteners. The coating of molybdenum disulfide also reduces the residual stress value of the fastener surface and leads to a decrease in fatigue life. Therefore, in order to control the fatigue life of TC4 fasteners, it is necessary to carry out the shot peening process, and control the rolling pressure, anodizing time and the coating thickness of molybdenum disulfide. The research in this paper provides a reference for the subsequent research on fastener fatigue strength control.