Abstract: Effects of load dwells on crack growth might be significant in correlating laboratory data from accelerated life tests ro real life fatigue perfomance of engineering structures. In this study, the dwells following an averload effects on fatigue crack retardation behaviors in two structureal steels-ASTM A537 and 16Mn are primarily investigated. Influences of different dwell times (holding times) and dwell loads are examined. It is shown that as the holding time at zero load increased, the number of delay cyc...