Mixed mode fatigue growth of curved cracks emanating from fastener holes in aircraft lap joints (Q1271599)

We propose a finite element alternating method for analyzing multiple arbitrarily curved cracks in an isotropic plate under plane stress loading. Several example problems are solved in order to check the accuracy and efficiency of the method. We also analyze curved cracks emanating from loaded fastener holes, due to mixed mode fatigue crack growth, under the uniform far field plane stress loading on the plate and sinusoidally distributed pin loading on the hole periphery.