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Mesoscopic simulations of damage accumulation under fatigue loading are based onunderstanding the processes of crack initiation, crack growth and crack coalescence.Analysing interacting cracks are still somewhat difficult whereas the initiation and extensionbehaviour of isolated small cracks is very well understood nowadays. Additional insight canbe gained in the mechanisms of crack initiation if the local stress state is taken into account.The damage accumulation process can then be simulated on a random grain structure basedon the real micro-structure or a stochastic model. Very good agreement can be achievedbetween experimentally observed crack patterns and simulated ones. The paper concludeswith some remarks on how to infer damage accumulation laws from these crack patterns.