The S–N results of the full FSW specimen in the range of 105–109 cycles are shown in Fig. 4, in which the fatigue strength of AA 7075 base material obtained by Wang et al. [15] are also presented for comparison. The specimens that did not fail after 109 cycles are plotted with arrows. It can be noted that the fatigue strength of the FSW joint decreased significantly compared with base material. At the fatigue life of 109 cycles, the fatigue resistance is about 70 MPa for the FSW, which accounts for only 35% of base material (200 MPa). It has been found that fatigue life of the FSW samples was always lower than that of the BM [16], but the FSW joint have a better fatigue strength than that of traditional fusion welds, because the successful FSW welds contains no inherent defects or internal flaws that are susceptible to fatigue crack initiation. But in this test, the experimental results show that the degradation of fatigue strength in high cycle fatigue and VHCF range is much more serious as compared to that in low cycle fatigue, and the defect-free FSW joint did not bring apparent improvements on fatigue performance, especially in the VHCF. Moreover, the profile of the S–N curve for the FSW specimen exhibits a horizontal platform in the range of 107–108 cycles and shows a step-like mode. It can be deduced that the discontinuous evolution of fatigue strength was ascribe to different fatigue failure mechanisms, and this will be discussed in the following sections.