Abstract
The degradation of a plain woven carbon fiber/epoxy composite under tension-tension fatigue loading was studied in this paper. An almost flat S-N diagram was obtained for this composite. As high as 85% fatigue strength of the static strength at 106 cycles was recorded. The residual strength after both static and cyclic loadings is higher than the static strength. A typical S-shape stiffness reduction against logarithmic cycle number is found for the high-cycle-fatigue specimens. However, sudden fatigue death of the specimens occurs with no indications in both S-S curves and AE events. Parameters of the parabolic function which fits the convex S-S curve represent the stiffness reduction better than the observed stiffness. Microscopic examination of the fracture surface was conducted. From those observations, a fatigue damage process mode is proposed.
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