Cracks nucleating and growing from adjacent fastener holes are common in transport aircraft fuselage structure. To study this phenomenon, both analytical and experimental investigations were completed. In the experimental part, a better understanding of the crack shape development and crack growth behavior of cracks emanating from adjacent holes is achieved by using a combined tension and bending specimen From the experimental results, the crack growth rate, crack shape and crack interaction effect for different initial crack shapes are determined. In the analytical part, stress intensity factor solutions for equal-sized, part-elliptical through cracks growing from a row of holes subject to remote tension, remote bending, and pin loading were calculated. The three-dimensional virtual crack closure technique is used to calculate the new K solutions. It is shown that oblique part-elliptical through cracks do not interact until very late in their fatigue life. This effect was more pronounced for large shallow cracks. In other words, straight through cracks interact earlier than oblique through cracks.
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