Most of mechanically jointed aircraft structures are always encountered the fretting damages on the contact surfaces between two jointed structural members or at the edges of fastener holes. The partial slip and contact stresses associated with fretting contact can lead to severe reduction in service lifetime of aircraft structures. Thus a critical need exists for predicting fretting crack initiation in mechanically jointed aircraft structures, which requires characterizing both the near-surface mechanics and intimate relationship with fretting parameters. In this point of view, a series of fretting fatigue specimen tests for 2024-T351 Al-alloy, have been conducted to validate a mechanics-based model for predicting fretting fatigue life. And included in this investigaion were elasto-plastic contact stress analyses using commercial FEA code to quantify the stress and strain fields in subsurface to evaluate the fretting fatigue crack initiation.