Fatigue damage modelling of composite materials

This paper develops a mathematical model for fatigue damage evolution in composite materials. The characteristics of damage growth in composite materials are studied and compared with those of damage growth in homogeneous materials. Continuum damage mechanics concepts are used to evaluate the degradation of composite materials under cyclic loading. A new damage accumulation model is proposed to capture the unique characteristics of composite materials. The proposed model is found to be more accurate than existing models, both in modelling the rapid damage growth early in life and near the end of fatigue life. The parameters for the proposed model are obtained with experimental data. A numerical example is implemented to illustrate that the proposed model is able to accurately fit several different sets of experimental data. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.