This research mainly focused on the effects of solution treatment on high-cycle fatigue properties, microstructure evolution, and fatigue fracture morphology of the high strength aluminum alloy (7075 aluminum alloy). The S-N curves and fatigue performance parameters of the alloy were obtained. We found that longer solution treatment time significantly influences the high-cycle (N ≥ 10⁵) fatigue properties of the Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy. Under the loading stress of 240 MPa, and the solution treatment of 2 h compared to 1.5 h, 1 h, and 0.5 h, the fatigue life was respectively improved by about 95.7%, 149%, and 359%. The microstructure observations conducted with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) are as follows: recrystallization occurs in the grains of the 7075 aluminum alloy under solution treatment, and the grains become large with the length of the solution treatment time. Cracks mainly initiate from the undissolved large phases, and prolonging the solution time can effectively promote the dissolution of the T phase and S phase, decrease the number of dislocations, and lower the rate of the initiation of fatigue cracks at the undissolved large phases due to dislocation glide and dislocation pile-up. In the second stage of crack propagation, the secondary cracks reduce the driving force and the rate of crack propagation, promoting the fatigue properties of the 7075 aluminum alloy, which can be verified by the observation result that fatigue striation widths become narrower with longer solution treatment times.

The fatigue performance of high-strength Al-Cu-Mg alloys is generally influenced by the process of creep age formation when applied to acquire higher strength. The results show that creep aging accelerates the precipitation process, leading to a more uniform precipitation of strengthening phases in grains, as well as narrowed precipitation-free zones (PFZ). Compared with the artificially aged alloy, the yield strength and hardness of the creep aged alloy increased, but the fatigue resistance decreased. In the low stress intensity factor region (ΔK ≤ 7 MPa·m^1/2), the fatigue crack propagation (FCP) rate was mainly affected by the characteristics of precipitates, and the fatigue resistance noticeably decreased with the increased creep time. In a 4 h creep aged alloy, the microstructure was dominated by Cu-Mg clusters and Guinier-Preston (GP) zones, while S″ phases began to precipitate in the matrix, showing better fatigue resistance. After aging for 24 h, the needle-shaped S’ phases were largely precipitated and coarsened, which changed the mode of dislocation slip, reduced the reversibility of slip, and accelerated the accumulation of fatigue damage. In stable and rapid crack propagation regions, the influence of precipitates on the FCP rate was negligible.

In this study, fatigue crack growth rates of industrial 2524-T3 aluminium alloy plates under various stress ratios R (R=0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and 0.5) were examined. The microstructure was observed by using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results showed that, for a given stress intensity factor range ΔK, the increase in stress ratio led to an increase in fatigue crack growth rate. Besides, the SEM images showed that the fatigue striations were predominant in the fracture, and the spacing of the fatigue striations also drastically increased as the stress ratio increased in different samples. This phenomenon can be explained well by crack closure effects.

A fatigue life prediction model with multiaxis load is proposed. The model introduces a new effective cyclic parameter, equivalent stress on the critical surface, to modify the Suntech model. The new damage parameters are not related to empirical constants, hence more applicable for practical application in engineering. The multiaxis fatigue test was carried out with high-strength aluminum alloy 7075-T651, and the multiaxis fatigue life prediction of the test piece was conducted with the finite element software. The experiment result shows that the model proposed is effective for predicting the fatigue life under multiaxis load.