Progressive Damage Modelling and Fatigue Life Prediction of Plain-weave Composite Laminates with Low-velocity Impact Damage

TL;DR

This study presents a new fatigue damage model for plain-weave composite laminates affected by low-velocity impact damage, validated through extensive experiments, which accurately predicts fatigue life and accounts for load sequence effects.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel fatigue progressive damage model that considers impact damage and load history, improving fatigue life prediction accuracy for composite laminates.

Findings

LVI damage significantly reduces fatigue strength.

Load history influences fatigue damage accumulation.

Model predictions align well with experimental results.

Abstract

This paper developed a fatigue-driven residual strength model considering the effects of low-velocity impact (LVI) damage and stress ratio. New fatigue failure criteria based on fatigue-driven residual strength concept and fatigue progressive damage model were developed to simulate fatigue damage growth and predict fatigue life for plain-weave composite laminates with LVI damage. To validate the proposed model, LVI tests of plain-weave glass fibre reinforced polymer 3238A/EW250F laminates were conducted, followed by post-impact constant amplitude tension-tension, compression-compression fatigue tests and multi-step fatigue tests. Experimental results indicate that the LVI damage degrades fatigue strength of plain-weave glass fibre composite laminate drastically. The load history also plays an important role on the fatigue accumulation damage of post-impact laminates. The new fatigue progressive damage model achieves a good agreement with fatigue life of post-impact laminates and is able to capture the load sequence effect, opening a new avenue to predict fatigue failure of composite laminates.