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International Journal of Fatigue 32 (2010) 134138

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International Journal of Fatigue


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijfatigue

A fatigue damage model of composite materials


Fuqiang Wu *, WeiXing Yao
Key Laboratory of Fundamental Science for National Defense-Advanced Design Technology of Flight Vehicle,
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The mechanical properties of composite materials degrade progressively with the increasing of the num-
Available online 20 February 2009 ber of cyclic loadings. Based on the stiffness degradation rule of composites, a phenomenological fatigue
damage model is presented in this paper, which contains two material parameters. They are proportional
Keywords: to the fatigue life of materials and inversely proportional to the fatigue loading level. Thirteen sets of
Composite experimental data of composite stiffness degradation were employed to verify the presented model,
Fatigue and the statistical results showed that this model is capable of describing the damage evolution of com-
Accumulative damage
posite materials. The characteristics of damage development and accumulation of composite materials
Predicted life
subjected to variable loading were studied in this paper. Four sets of two-level loading experimental data
were cited to verify the damage model, and the results showed that the predicted life is in good agree-
ment with the experimental ones.
2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction residual fatigue life of composite laminates quite well by four sets
of two-level experimental data.
The damage evolution mechanism is one of the important fo-
cuses of fatigue behavior investigation of composite materials 2. Damage model
and also is the foundation to predict fatigue life of composite struc-
tures for engineering applications. As known, the fatigue damage Under cyclic stress or strain, the non-inverse structural change
and failure mechanism of composites is more complex than that will occur in micro local eld in composite materials and these
of metals and four basic failure types will occurr in composites un- changes lead to fatigue damage of composites. With an increase
der cyclic loading, which are matrix cracking, interfacial debond- in the number of loading cycles, the quantity of this change will in-
ing, delamination and ber breakage. Based on a great deal of crease and the damage will cumulate synchronously. The accumu-
experimental investigations, many damage models [18], which lation of damage leads to a change in the macroscopic mechanical
have been, respectively, dened by strength degradation, stiffness properties of the composites, such as the degradation of strength or
degradation and energy dissipation of composites, have been em- stiffness of the material. Based on the experimental investigation,
ployed to describe the damage development of materials in the re- Reifsnider [1] concluded that fatigue damage evolution is nonlin-
cent decades. The cognition to damage evolution mechanism had ear in composite materials. During the initial period of fatigue life,
been developed from linear model to nonlinear model. However, many non-interactive cracks occur in the matrix. When the matrix
most models are just suited to a special composite and are not crack density reaches saturation, the ber failure, interfacial deb-
capable of tting others. To obtain the parameters of the models, onding and delamination occur in the composites. Damage will
a mass of fatigue experimental data is necessary. The fatigue dam- rapidly develop and the material causes sudden death in the
age mechanism of composites has not yet been recognized wholly. end period of fatigue life, as shown in Fig. 1.
In this paper, the factors related to fatigue damage development To test the change in Youngs modulus of materials, the damage
of composites were analyzed and a phenomenological fatigue development of composite materials can be described by stiffness
damage model dened by material stiffness degradation is de- degradation of materials in fatigue behavior investigation. Based
scribed. Thirteen sets of experimental data were employed to ver- on this technique that spends less experimental time and cost,
ify the model, and the results show that the model can describe the many nonlinear damage evolution models [8] were presented.
damage evolution of composite laminates under the different fati- And the models dened by stiffness degradation of composite lam-
gue loadings. And it is also veried that the model can predict inates are widely investigated theoretically and experimentally
and they fairly described the damage progress in the initial or/
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 25 84892576. and middle period of the fatigue life. However, they are not capable
E-mail address: stonefuq@hotmail.com (F. Wu). of tting the damage progress in the whole period, as shown in

0142-1123/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijfatigue.2009.02.027
F. Wu, W. Yao / International Journal of Fatigue 32 (2010) 134138 135

period of fatigue life, ber breaking controls the composite failure.


The faster the fractured rate of the ber is, the shorter the fatigue
life is. With the increase in the numbers of fractured bers, the rate
of damage development of material increases quickly and again.
Therefore, the change rule of the damage development rate in com-
posites is from quick to slow and to quick again in the whole period
of the fatigue life.
In Eq. (1), the normalization fatigue life n/N is rewritten as x = n/
N. Then, the rate of damage development of laminate is
dD
ABxB1 1  xB A1 2
dx
According to the values of parameters A and B in Table 1, the dam-
age development rates of the laminates can be gotten, as shown in
Fig. 3.
Based on the characteristics of damage evolution of composite
Fig. 1. Fatigue damage evolution in composite laminates [1].
materials, the rates of damage development between the initial
period and the nal period of fatigue life are same, as shown in
Fig. 1. According to the fatigue mechanisms of composites, a versa- Fig. 3. Then, an assumption is proposed, which is that the rates
tile new fatigue damage model is presented to describe the stiff- at any normalization life x1 and x2 (0 < x1 < x2 < 1) are same. From
ness degradation rule of composite materials in the loading the Eq. (2), the parameters A and B can be expressed as
direction. The proposed model of the damage is that lg xx12
  n B A A 1 B  1 1xB
3
E0  En lg 1x2B
Dn 1 1 1 1
E0  E f N
It can be veried mathematically that the relation between A and B
where E0 is initial Youngs modulus, Ef is the failure Youngs modu- in Eq. (3) approximates the linear relation, when x1 and x2 are
lus, E(n) is Youngs modulus of the material subjected to the nth cy- discretionarily given. Therefore, Eq. (3) can be approximately ex-
cling loading, n is the cycle, N is the fatigue life, A and B are model pressed as
parameters, D(n) is the fatigue damage, which equals 0 when n = 0
and equals 1 when n = N.
A pB q 4
where p and q are constants. To t the values of parameters A and B,
3. Statistical analysis as shown in Table 1, a quantitative relationship between the param-
eters is proposed
According to the stiffness degradation experimental data of
A 0:67B 0:44 5
composite materials, the material fatigue damage values are gotten
under different cycles. Then, the curve of Eq. (1) can be gotten by When the laminates are subjected to the fatigue loading, the
the least squares tting. The comprehensive data published in Refs. less the ultimate strength, the ratio R of stress or strain, the fatigue
[3,9,10] were used to validate the proposed damage model. The life under given loading is or the bigger the loading is, the bigger
values of A and B in Eq. (1) and the correlative coefcient R2 are the fatigue damage in the initial period of the fatigue life is. In
listed out in Table 1 and are shown in Fig. 2. Eq. (1), the parameter B describes the characteristics of laminate
Eq. (1) is capable of describing the nonlinear damage evolution damage in the initial period of the fatigue life. The less B is, the big-
macro-mechanically in all periods of the fatigue life of composite ger the laminate damage is. Therefore, the parameter B is propor-
materials subjected to different fatigue loadings, as shown in tional to the fatigue life N and is inversely proportional to the
Fig. 2. During the initial period of the fatigue life, the main damage loading level rmax =rult .
type is matrix cracking in the composite. The bigger the applied lg N
loading is or the less the ratio R of stress or strain (R = rmin/rmax Bk 6
1  Rrmax =rult
or R = emin/emax) is, the faster the damage development is. When
the crack density is saturated in the matrix, the rate of damage where rmax is the maximum stress, rult is the ultimate strength, and
development of the material is steady and slow. During the nal k is a proportional constant.

Table 1
The values of the parameters of the presented model.

Materials Loading/sequence A B R2
Glass/HC9106-3 [0/903]S [3] 75%rult 0.314 0.025 0.949
80%rult 0.419 0.055 0.9805
T300/QY8911[9] [45/90/45/02/45/90/45]S 509.7 MPa 0.615 0.296 0.9997
441.7 MPa 0.703 0.445 0.9991
424.7 MPa 0.742 0.511 0.9995
[45/0/45/902/45/0/45]S 462.1 MPa 0.664 0.292 0.9527
431.3 MPa 0.753 0.401 0.9809
400.5 MPa 0.842 0.514 0.9888
[02/45/02/45/0/90]S 946.2 MPa 0.503 0.025 0.8855
917.5 MPa 0.571 0.057 0.8668
888.8 MPa 0.581 0.109 0.9804
AS4/PR500 [0/90W2]S [10] Unaged specimen 0.715 0.475 0.9842
Aged specimen 0.679 0.384 0.9992
136 F. Wu, W. Yao / International Journal of Fatigue 32 (2010) 134138

Fig. 2. Damage development of composite materials under different loadings.

4. Damage accumulation  B !Ai


ni ni;i1 i
Dni 1  1  7a
Ni
When the composite materials are subjected to the constant 0 11=Bi
Bi1 ! i1
A
amplitude fatigue loading, the damage development of materials  Ai
can be described by Eq. (1). Under the variable amplitude fatigue B ni1 ni1;i2 C
ni;i1 Ni @1  1  A 7b
loading, the damage that is produced in the former stage loading Ni1
will affect the damage that is produced in the next stage loading.
Then, the cumulative fatigue damage D(n) in the composite mate- where Ai, Ai1, Bi, Bi1 are the parameters under the ith and
rials subjected to the ith loading is calculated as (i1)th fatigue loadings, respectively, ni and ni1 are the cycles
F. Wu, W. Yao / International Journal of Fatigue 32 (2010) 134138 137

Table 4
Life estimated by proposed model and experimental results for E-glass/epoxy [5].

Experimental Predicted
r1 (MPa) r2 (MPa) n1 n2 n2
386 241 250 192,000 64,267
386 241 100 193,000 100,320
386 289 250 5840 5944
386 289 100 11,970 9605
386 337 250 1250 1090
386 337 100 1635 1784
337 241 1000 86,000 83,293
337 241 249 162,500 130,098
337 289 1000 8670 7905
337 289 249 8000 12,298
289 241 9996 96,500 52,292
289 241 1999 110,800 135,150
241 289 49,938 3730 11,619
241 289 19,975 9490 13,877
Fig. 3. The rate of damage development of laminates. 241 337 49,938 391 2120
241 337 19,975 804 2414
241 386 19,975 124 490
Table 2 289 337 9996 293 846
Life estimated by proposed model and experimental results for carbon/epoxy [12]. 289 337 1999 1290 2276
289 386 1999 355 476
Experimental Predicted
337 386 1000 297 328
r1 (MPa) r2 (MPa) n1 n2 n2 337 386 249 503 468
315 340 87,200 520 2214
315 340 87,000 150 2232
315 340 86,300 1408 2293
315 340 57,700 1750 4803 Table 5
315 340 57,550 2280 4816 Life estimated by proposed model and experimental results for E-glass/epoxy [6].
315 340 40,300 2027 6266
Experimental Predicted
315 340 28,700 3320 7169
315 340 26,500 2640 7331 r1 (MPa) r2 (MPa) n1 n2 n2
315 340 25,300 2464 7418
539 654.5 10,000 2031 3241
315 340 17,650 6170 7942
654.5 539 500 33,049 37046
315 340 17,000 38,140 7984
577.5 654.5 5000 3240 3256
315 340 13,000 14,300 8229
654.5 577.5 500 21,450 22,054
315 340 12,500 24,030 8259
340 315 8500 15,250 4665
340 315 7480 17,060 17,517
340 315 7480 79,496 17,517
340 315 6800 29,939 25,482 loading that is the last step cyclic loading, the critical damage is de-
340 315 6500 48,760 28,931 ned as
340 315 4600 73,910 50,523
340 315 4400 89,350 52,809
DnM 1 8
340 315 4400 80,605 52,809
340 315 2500 90,150 75,271
340 315 1500 41,840 88,222 5. Verication
340 315 1500 111,120 88,222
340 315 1350 99,520 90,296 In order to calculate the damage of materials by the presented
model, it is necessary to know the fatigue life under constant
amplitude loading. The fatigue life can be gotten from the experi-
mental data or the material SN curve. The following SN curve
Table 3
Life estimated by proposed model and experimental results for E-glass/epoxy [11].
model [13] has been applied in this paper
   a  
Experimental Predicted lg N
S 1 m exp  1 9
e1 (%) e2 (%) n1 n2 n2 b
0.7 1.0 10,000 5850 6218 where S = rmax/rult or S = emax/eult, emax is the maximum strain, eult is
0.7 1.0 10,000 5430 6218 the ultimate strain. a, b and m are the experimental parameters.
0.7 1.0 10,000 3280 6218
According to the experimental data of composite materials, the
0.7 1.0 10,000 9490 6218
0.7 0.5 10,000 1,635,210 2,382,166 material damage evolution curve under the constant amplitude fa-
0.7 0.5 10,000 925,240 2,382,166 tigue loading that is Eq. (1) was gotten. Then, the fatigue damage of
0.7 0.5 10,000 150,9550 2,382,166 materials can be calculated by Eq. (1) under different constant
0.7 0.5 10,000 830,050 2,382,166 amplitude loadings. Based on the accumulative rules of Eq. (7)
and (8), the residual fatigue life of laminates can be predicted nal-
ly. The comprehensive data published in Refs. [5,6,11,12] were used
under the ith and (i1)th cyclic loadings, Ni and Ni1 are the fatigue to validate the proposed cumulative damage model. According to
lives corresponding to the ith and (i1)th applied loadings, ni,i1 is the proposed algorithm, the residual fatigue life of composites is
equivalent cycles. According to the same produced damage, the calculated and the results of this work are presented in Tables 2
equivalent cycles ni,i1 under the ith cyclic loading are equaled to 5 with experimental data.
the sum of cycles (ni1 + ni1,i2) under the (i1)th cyclic loading, According to the experimental data, it is a good regression that
and i  2; n1;0 0. When the fatigue failure occurs under Mth cyclic the proportional constant k equals 0.06. The results show that the
138 F. Wu, W. Yao / International Journal of Fatigue 32 (2010) 134138

analyzed and the quantitative relation is gotten, that the parame-


ters of the model are proportional to the fatigue life and are inver-
sely proportional to the fatigue loading level. The two-level loading
examples show that the model can predict residual fatigue life of
composite materials quite well.

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