In this paper strain ratcheting in cold expanded flat plate of Al-alloy 2024-T3 in double shear lap joints was studied both experimentally and numerically. In the experimental part, two types of symmetric strain-controlled and asymmetric stress-controlled cyclic tests were performed. Also, the cold expanded double shear lap joints subjected to cyclic stress-controlled tests. The required parameters for simulating the cyclic plastic behaviour of Al-alloy 2024-T3 were obtained on the basis of the experimental responses. In the numerical part, a combination of nonlinear isotropic and nonlinear kinematic hardening model (Chaboche) was implemented in the commercial finite element code of ABAQUS, using the subroutine UMAT written in FORTRAN. The results of simulations give an accurate prediction of ratcheting for all types of loading. The obtained results show that increasing the mean stress increases the strain ratcheting. It is clearly shown that the cold expansion process decreases the magnitude of strain ratcheting remarkably compared with "as drilled" specimens and the decrease is bigger for larger cold expansion sizes.Also, it is shown that the middle plane has the highest amount of ratcheting compared to the pin entrance plane and exit plane of the plate hole.

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In this paper, the mean stress relaxation behavior of simple Al‐alloy 2024‐T3 specimens and also the mean stress relaxation around the hole of cold expanded specimen are studied. The analyses are performed through the combination of the nonlinear isotropic hardening and Chaboche nonlinear kinematic hardening model accompanied by the results of experimental tests. The strain‐controlled axial tests are performed at two different strain amplitudes, while the stress‐controlled tests of cold expanded specimens are performed for three different imposed load amplitudes. The constitutive equations of the hardening model are coded as a UMAT subroutine in FORTRAN programming language and implemented in the commercial finite element code of ABAQUS. The accuracy of the hardening model has been proved in two steps: first by simulations of mean stress relaxation during the uniaxial strain‐controlled cyclic tests and second by simulation of strain ratcheting during the stress‐controlled cyclic loading. The stress and strain distributions after cold expansion process are examined as well as the mean stress relaxation due to cyclic loading. The results show the influences of imposed stress amplitude on increasing mean stress relaxation and also the effect of cold expansion level on reducing the mean stress relaxation.