A micromechanical approach for the fatigue failure prediction of unidirectional polymer matrix composites in off-axis loading including the effect of viscoelasticity

A novel micromechanical approach is used to study the fatigue failure of unidirectional polymer matrix composites subject to off-axis loading. The main advantage of the present micromechanical model lies in its ability to give closed form solutions for the effective nonlinear response of unidirectional composites and to predict the material response to any combination of shear and normal loading. The fatigue failure criterion is expressed in terms of the fatigue failure functions of the constituent materials. The micromechanical model is also used to calculate these fatigue failure functions from the knowledge of the S–N diagrams of the composite material in longitudinal, transverse, and shear loadings; thus, eliminating the need for any further experimentation. Unlike previous works, the present study accounts for the viscoelasticity of the matrix material rendering it the capability of modeling creep damage accumulation in high-temperature composite materials. The results are found to be in good agreement with the literature. In particular, for higher off-axis angles, the results are seen to be in better concurrence with the experimental data compared to when the effect of viscoelasticity is overlooked. The present approach is also capable of accounting for the strain evolution due to viscoelasticity of the matrix material.