Fatigue failure in graphite fibre and glass fibre-polymer composites

Our studies have established that unidirectional graphite fibre composites show excellent fatigue resistance with only a 20 to 30% decrease in strength with cycling. Fatigue failures invariably occurred on the surfaces undergoing compression and were identified by scanning electron microscope studies as resulting from matrix failure adjacent to local fibre buckling failure zones. In contrast, glass fibre composites showed a much larger (70%) loss in strength under cyclic loading. At intermediate lives, failure occurred by the growth of matrix microcracks followed by delamination, while at long lives, the applied stress levels were below the microcrack initiation stress and behaviour was characterized by crack nucleation processes. These results have suggested a criterion for predicting high cycle fatigue strength which is based on the hypothesis that for failure to occur, the maximum applied effective cyclic strain in the composite must exceed a critical value which depends upon the fatigue response of the matrix material. The main assumption is that localized fatigue failures in the matrix are the predominant contributions to the ultimate fatigue failure of the composite.