Rapid Determination of the High Cycle Fatigue Limit Curve of Carbon Fiber Epoxy Matrix Composite Laminates by Thermography Methodology: Tests and Finite Element Simulations

Laurent Gornet (1) , Ophélie Westphal (1) , Christian Burtin (1) , Jean Luc Bailleul (2) , Patrick Rozycki (1) , Laurent Stainier (1)

1 GeM - Institut de Recherche en Génie Civil et Mécanique
2 LTN - Laboratoire de thermocinétique [Nantes]

Self-heating measurements under cyclic loading allow a fast estimation of fatigue properties of composite materials. The tensile fatigue behavior of a high stress carbon fiber epoxy-matrix composite laminates is examined at room temperature. Tension- tension cyclic fatigue tests are also conducted under load control at a sinusoidal frequency of 5 Hz to obtain high-cycle fatigue stress curves (S-N). The fatigue limits of the different composite lay-ups tested were successfully compared with data resulting from the self-heating test method on the same laminates. This comparison reveals a good agreement between the two methods dedicated to stress fatigue limit determination. In addition, a tomographic analysis is used to perform comparisons at the microscale between both fatigue methods. The nonlinear heat transfer laminate theory is used for self-heating tests simulation. Self-heating simulations involving conduction, convection, and boundary radiation are performed with the Finite Element code Cast3 M.

Mots clés: fatigue; self-heating; damage; thermomechanical behavior

Domaines: Mécanique des matériaux [physics.class-ph]

Laurent Gornet, Ophélie Westphal, Christian Burtin, Jean Luc Bailleul, Patrick Rozycki, et al.. Rapid Determination of the High Cycle Fatigue Limit Curve of Carbon Fiber Epoxy Matrix Composite Laminates by Thermography Methodology: Tests and Finite Element Simulations. Procedia Engineering, 2013, Fatigue Design 2013, International Conference Proceedings, 66, pp.697-704. ⟨10.1016/j.proeng.2013.12.123⟩. ⟨hal-01240282⟩