Initiation and early growth of fatigue cracks in an aerospace aluminium alloy

Abstract Material imperfections usually play a substantial role in the early stages of fatigue cracking. This article presents some observations concerning fatigue crack initiating flaws and early crack growth in 7050‐T7451 aluminium alloy specimens and in full‐scale fatigue test articles with a production surface finish. Equivalent initial flaw size (EIFS) approaches used to evaluate the fatigue implications of metallurgical, manufacturing and service‐induced features were refined by using quantitative fractography to acquire detailed information on the early crack growth behaviour of individual cracks; the crack growth observations were employed in a simple crack growth model developed for use in analysing service crack growth. The use of observed crack growth behaviour reduces the variability which is inherent in EIFS approaches which rely on modelling the whole of fatigue life, and which can dominate EIFS methods. The observations of realistic initial flaws also highlighted some of the significant factors in the fatigue life‐determining early fatigue growth phase, such as surface treatment processes. Although inclusions are often regarded as the single most common type of initiating flaw, processes which include etching can lead to etch pitting of grain boundaries with significant fatigue life implications.