Investigation of the Influence of Small Hole on the Fatigue Crack Growth Path

The goal of this paper is to investigate the fatigue crack growth (FCG) path in 7075-T6 aluminum alloy affected by small hole. The codes ANSYS and FRANC3D are jointly used to compute the stress intensity factors and predict the FCG path. The predicted results show that the fatigue crack turns its growth direction toward the hole. The different locations and sizes of single hole have different influences on the FCG paths, while two symmetrically distributed holes have no effects on the FCG path. The predicted FCG paths are validated by the related FCG test results.