Fatigue of natural fiber thermoplastic composites

The fatigue behavior of hemp-fiber-reinforced High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) composites is investigated using fatigue-life (S-N) curves at different fiber volume fractions. For this purpose, a new modified stress level is proposed to normalize the developed S-N curves into one normalized S-N curve. A generalized fatigue behavior model is developed to simulate the fatigue-life response of these composites. It is demonstrated that the developed model is capable of predicting the fatigue behavior of the natural fiber composites at different fiber fractions and fatigue stress ratios, and is also capable of accounting for the effect of moisture absorption. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.