Experimental and analytical investigation for fatigue crack growth characteristics of an aero-engine fan disc

•The computational-experimental method was performed to investigate the crack growth behavior of aero-engine fan disc by numerical simulation, rectangular plate model and spin test.•The artificially embedded elliptical crack was analyzed by replica technique, fracture analysis, finite calculation and theory prediction, and then the suitable method was revealed.•Crack closure effect was introduced to improve the prediction accuracy of crack growth rate and crack profile evolution.