Surface finish of open holes on fatigue life

In this paper, the effect of surface finish of open holes on the fatigue life has been studied. Four defects of the surface finish are simulated. They are scratch, void, inclusion and roundness. Firstly, the effect of the four defects on the stress distributions around the holes has been studied by the finite element method (FEM). The fatigue lives are determined based on the stress distributions by the method of nominal stress approach. The results show that the fatigue lives are dependent on the quantity of the surface finished. There are the critical defect values of scratch, void and inclusion, smaller than which there is no effect of the surface finish on the fatigue life. For these three defects, the fatigue lives decrease with the increasing of the values of the defects. It is the same to the defect of roundness, e.g. the bigger roundness tolerance is, the shorter the life is. Further, an approximate quadratic curve has been found for the relationship between the roundness tolerances and their logarithmic fatigue lives.