Understanding crack growth in fuselage lap joints

The problem of multi-site damage and multiple interacting cracks is one experienced by many aircraft manufacturers and operators. This paper focuses on understanding the phenomena, and on developing a predictive capability that can form the engineering framework for maintaining continued airworthiness. To this end the present paper uses a simple formulation based on the Frost–Dugdale crack growth law to study the problem of cracking at fastener holes in fuselage lap joints and shows that the predicted crack growth history is in good agreement with both experimental results and with fleet data.