Effect of fibre waviness on the compressive fatigue behavior of woven carbon/epoxy laminates

In the present work, two woven carbon/epoxy laminates with different areal weight were tested under tension-compression (R = -1) and compression-compression (R = -infinity) cyclic loadings. Their performance was evaluated in terms life to final separation and stiffness degradation during the fatigue life. In addition, microscopic observations were carried out at regular intervals during the tests to identify the damage evolution at the microscale. The bundle waviness was found to have a large influence on the damage mechanisms and the fatigue life of the laminates both for tension-compression and compression-compression loadings, while the stiffness loss remained small until final failure in all cases.