Fatigue failure mechanism of aluminium alloy riveted single-shear lap joints

•The fatigue test of single shear lap joints riveted by swage-locking pins was carried out. The damage evolution process and fatigue fracture behavior of contact interface were studied.•The surface-surface fretting wear of the lap plates is not uniform, resulting in two kinds of fringe morphology of the contact interface: wear and non-wear areas.•An image recognition algorithm is used to extract and calculate the area of the debris area.•The fatigue failure mode of joint is related to load. The lap plate fatigue fracture under low load, and the rivet shear fracture under high load.•Under the influence of the contact stress, the micro-crack propagates along the direction of 75 degrees from the contact surface at the initial stage of crack propagation.