Probabilistic fatigue life prediction of composite materials

Abstract This chapter discusses the use of probabilistic models to describe the fatigue behavior of composite materials and to quantify the uncertainties in fatigue life prediction. The chapter first reviews existing methods for probabilistic fatigue life prediction and then discusses how to quantify the uncertainties in applied loading and material properties. Following this, a random process approach using the Karhunen-Loeve expansion technique is discussed to quantify the input uncertainties as well as their correlations. Probabilistic methods are presented to solve the time-dependent reliability problem. The probabilistic life prediction method is demonstrated under variable amplitude loading for several example problems.