Abstract
Fatigue characterization is an important concern for structural materials. The fatigue behaviour of aluminium (Al) composite reinforced with carbon nanotubes (CNT) is of interest besides its improved strength. In this study, tension-tension fatigue tests were conducted on monolithic Al and Al reinforced with 0.5, 1 and 2 weight percentages of CNT. Experimental results showed that the addition of CNTs significantly increased the number of load cycles to failure for each loading case. CNTs could slow fatigue crack propagation by crack-bridging and CNT frictional pull-out mechanisms. Cyclic softening was observed for both monolithic Al and Al-0.5CNT fatigued at an intermediate-high maximum stress of 120 MPa. TEM studies showed that the cyclic softening was attributed to the rearrangement of dislocations into lower potential energy configurations, i.e. parallel arrays and twin boundary dislocations.
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