Modelling the effect of temperature on the probabilistic stress–life fatigue diagram of glass fibre–polymer composites loaded in tension along the fibre direction

Abstract

Predicting the fatigue performance of composites has proven to be a challenge both conceptually, due to the inherent complexity of the phenomenon, and practically, because of the resource-intensive process of fatigue testing. Moreover, mechanical behaviour of polymer matrix composites exhibits a complicated temperature dependence, making the prediction of fatigue performance under different temperatures even more complex and resource intensive. The objective of this paper is to provide a method for the prediction of fatigue life of glass–polymer composites loaded in the fibre direction at various temperatures with minimal experimental efforts. This is achieved by using a static strength degradation approach to fatigue modelling, where only two parameters (including static strength) are temperature dependent, in conjunction with relationships for these two fatigue model parameters temperature dependence. The method relies on fatigue data at a single temperature and simple static tests at different temperatures to predict the effects of temperature on the material’s fatigue behaviour. The model is validated on experimental data for two unidirectional and one woven glass–epoxy composites and is found to accurately predict the effect of temperature on fatigue life of composites. A method to obtain probabilistic stress-life [Formula: see text] fatigue diagrams including temperature effects is also presented.