<p>Aluminum alloy holes are commonly used in aviation and aerospace fields for its low density and favorable mechanical behaviors. However, the easy deformation of aluminum alloy may jeopardize the overall service life of the aviation structure. Therefore, the strengthening of aluminum alloy is significant, which is to both improve the surface quality and residual stress. Cold expansion and burnishing, as two widely used hole strengthening methods, both have their own pros and cons. Cold expansion can introduce a large compressive residual compressive stress near the material surface, but the surface quality of the hole wall is not improved enough, sometimes even decreased. On the contrary, hole burnishing can effectively improve the surface quality of the hole wall but is difficult to generate a large compressive residual stress layer in the hole wall due to lower interference. Consequently, it is challenging to simultaneously optimize both surface quality and residual stress. Based on the features of aluminum alloy, the effects of cold expansion, burnishing and combined cold-expansion-burnishing methods (CE-B) on aluminum alloy hole is proposed in this study, in order to reveal the comprehensive effects of different aluminum alloy hole strengthening process and mechanism. The experimental results demonstrate that the fatigue life of the workpieces improved by 163.42%, 25.93%, and 45.41% after cold expansion, burnishing, and CE-B strengthening, respectively. Analyzing the surface integrity results, although the surface roughness of the specimens decreased by 91.29% after CE-B, the surface residual stress also decreased by about 70%, which led to a reduction in fatigue life after burnishing.</p>