Fatigue Life Prediction Of 2-D Woven Composite Laminates

Since 1960s, the advanced composite, especially the advanced resin matrix composite, has been greatly developed in the world for its unique characteristic. And it has been one of the most important materials of modern aerospace and aircraft industry. 2-D woven fabric composite is also widely used in aerospace and aircraft industry. This paper is to establish the method of predicting the fatigue life of 2-D woven fabric composite laminates, which based on the theory of single ply, and progressive damage method.The fatigue performance of 2-D satin woven fabric composite laminates has been studied in this paper, which is mainly including the followings:(1)A progressive damage method of predicting the fatigue life of 2-D woven fabric composite laminates is established in the paper, which is based on the theory of bidirectional ply. Stress analysis of composite laminates was performed by creating a three-dimensional finite element model using the ANSYS FE code. The fatigue life of two different lay orientations 2-D satin woven fabric composite laminates in tension-tension fatigue loading conditions are predicted by using the fatigue progressive damage method established in the paper. An excellent agreement is found between data obtained from this study and the experiment.(2)The fatigue failure criteria and the sudden material property degradation rules of unidirectional fiber-reinforced composite laminates have been developed for the 2-D woven fabric composite laminates. And they are used in the fatigue life prediction method established in the paper.(3)An experimental program which includes lots of bidirectional laminae is conducted using satin fabric composites for researching the fatigue behaviour of the bidirectional ply. The experimental research for mechanical behaviour of a bidirectional lamina is to set up expressions of the residual strength degradation and the residual stiffness degradation of a bidirectional ply in the longitudinal and in-plane-shear directions.(4)A fatigue life prediction programme for 2-D woven fabric composite laminates has been developed with Ansys Parameter Design Language on the ANSYS software.