Accelerated fatigue life diagram characterization of CFRP

Abstract

There are several ways to obtain the fatigue life behavior of composite materials, such as the application of classical theories or complex progressive damage models. Recently, constant life diagrams have demonstrated good effectiveness in predicting the fatigue life of CFRPs. Nevertheless, the large number of tests required, and the time necessary for the characterization, makes this method very expensive in terms of time and resources. The aim of this work is the evaluation of accelerated characterization techniques in addiction with statistical methods, to obtain constant fatigue life diagrams of CFRPs, with a reduced number of tests and a shorter characterization time. The results show that, combining universal and accelerated testing techniques with statistical methods, it is possible to obtain constant life diagram for the whole range of tension-tension, tension-compression, and compression-compression loading modes, with a reduced number of tests. Moreover, it is observed that, the accelerated characterization techniques show a fatigue life limit similar to the conventional ones.