Fatigue life evaluation of damaged aircraft lugs

In the present paper, engineering procedures are proposed for estimating the strength of aircraft lugs subjected to cyclic tensile loading. The crack growth simulation examines pin loaded lugs under either a constant amplitude loading or a single overload. The fatigue life analysis tackles the stress intensity factor calculation. The residual strength of throughthe- thickness damaged lugs is modeled by introducing the Walker’s model. In order to investigate the single overload effect, the Wheeler’s retardation parameter is employed. The estimations are compared with available experimental data. The verifications show that evaluations and experimental results are in a good agreement. Then, the effect of width, diameter and thickness on fatigue life up to failure of lugs is analysed.