Cyclic damage quantification in composite materials using discrete damage mechanics

A method for fatigue damage quantification in composite materials, based on experimental stiffness degradation data for composite laminates subjected to cyclic load is proposed. Discrete damage mechanics theory is used to calculate crack density vs. number of cycles from elastic moduli-reduction data obtained during fatigue experiments. The calculated crack density simplifies fatigue testing by diminishing the need for counting cracks during testing. Accurate results are achieved and reported. The defect-nucleation rate, which controls the fatigue damage rate, is also obtained from processing the modulus-reduction data. It is observed that the defect-nucleation rate has a small scatter and is independent of applied load magnitude. Furthermore, the onset of delamination observed in the experiments correlates very well with the onset of deviation between the predicted and experimental curves of elastic moduli-reduction versus accumulated crack density. An additional parameter, the defect-nucleation threshold, is here proposed to further characterize the fatigue performance of the composite material under stress-controlled fatigue loading, in contrast to thermal fatigue results from the literature. Furthermore, the difference in damage nucleation rate between strain-controlled and stress-controlled was observed and discussed.