Let us consider the effect of microstructural heterogeneity in the FSW joint on the fatigue strength. The S–N diagrams of different subzones across the FSW joint (the NZ, TMAZ-AS, TMAZ-RS and HAZ) are plotted in Fig. 5. Although the scatter is large, a breakpoint could be observed for all the subzone specimens to differentiate variation features of fatigue strength between high cycle fatigue and VHCF ranges, so the evolution of S–N curves are represented approximately with two segments of straight line, as plotted in Fig. 5. It shows that the fatigue strength of the NZ and HAZ keeps decreasing with the increasing the fatigue life up to 109 cycles, which the HAZ shows the highest fatigue performance among all the subzone specimens. According to the some previous works [17] and [18], the HAZ of FSW aluminum alloy exhibited lower fatigue crack growth rates and higher fatigue crack growth threshold, compared to the other subzones. It seems that the softening induced by high temperature experience has limited effects on the fatigue behaviors of the HAZ, because the applied maximum stress in ultrasonic fatigue test is generally much lower than the yield strength of the HAZ. This was also confirmed in another work that the HAZ of aluminum welded joint is the weakest zone in tension test because of the softening, in spite of that, fatigue crack was prone to initiated from the defects at the fusion zone in the HCF and VHCF [19]. Therefore, the HAZ has a better fatigue strength than the NZ in the VHCF range. In addition, Fig. 5 presents that the S–N curves of the TMAZ exhibit a horizontal platform both in the advancing side and retreating side, so fatigue limit exists for TMAZ in the VHCF range, and the TMAZ-AS has the lower fatigue strength than that in retreating side. The differences in fatigue strength between TMAZ-AS and TMAZ-RS may be ascribe to the microstructure, of which the advancing side is characterized by a sharp boundary between the NZ and TMAZ, while the boundary in the retreating side is not clear.