Effect of defects on fatigue life of plates with fastener holes

The behavior of defects (inclusions and cavities) on fatigue life of plates with fastener holes under tensile loading has been analyzed. Special attentions have been paid on the influence of the size and location of defects on fatigue life of plates with fastener holes. Thirty‐five different finite element models of plates with different size and location of defects are established and the nominal stress method is used to estimate the fatigue lives of this models. The results show that there is a region whose center is the maximum stress point of the hole without defects. When the defect is located in this region, the influence of defects on fatigue life of plates with fastener holes is obvious. When the defects are far away form this region' center, the defects hardly influence the fatigue life of plates with fastener hole. The larger the size of the defect is, the bigger this region is. In this region, the larger the size of the defect and the shorter the distance between the defect and the region's center, the shorter the fatigue life of plates with fastener hole is.