Comparative Study on Fatigue Life of CFRP Composites with Damages

In this work, the compressive residual strength tests results, Compression After Impact (CAI), are presented. The specimens were made of carbon-epoxy prepreg E722-02 UHS 130-14. Two variants of specimens were tested: samples undamaged and samples with damage that was centrally introduced by a drop-weight impact, as per the ASTM D7136/7136M standard. An impactor with potential energy equal to 15J and the type of support required by the standard were used. The size of impacted damages, defined as an area of damage on a plane perpendicular to the impact direction, and the equivalent diameter were specified using the flash thermography method.

The tests were performed using the fixtures manufactured according to the ASTM D7137/7137M standard. The specimens were compressed to determine the residual strength. This value was afterwards used to specify the force levels for the fatigue tests. The fatigue tests were carried out under force control – with a sinusoidal shape, stress ratio R equal to 0.1 and frequency f 1Hz. Maximum force in a loading cycle P_max was being increased after each thousand of cycles N until its value was close to the residual strength determined in the previously mentioned tests. In this work, the following relationships were presented: force-displacement P-δ for both static and fatigue tests and displacement-loading cycles δ-N for fatigue tests.

A method of conducting the fatigue tests of CFRP composite was proposed, in which both the CAI specimens and CAI fixture were used. This allowed researchers to accelerate making initial comparisons between the two groups of specimens with damages – grouped relative to the way of conditioning.