The retardation effect of combined application of stop-hole and overload on sheet steel

•The tests were conducted on steels with stop-hole and the combination of stop-hole and overload.•A model considering the short crack effect and the residual stress effect was proposed.•The interaction between overload and stop-hole was found to extend the fatigue life. This study is aimed at analyzing the fatigue crack growth behavior with the pure stop-hole effect and the combination of stop-hole and overload. Experiments were conducted under different stop-hole parameters and overload parameters on QSTE340TM automobile steel. The interaction of stop-hole retardation and overload retardation was found in the stop-hole and overload combined experiments. A model was modified based on the short crack effect and the residual stress effect to estimate the fatigue crack growth with the stop-hole retardation. The model was also merged with the Wheeler-Alpha model to estimate the stop-hole and overload combined experiments and achieved good agreements.