A Continuum Damage Mechanics-based Piecewise Fatigue Damage Model for Fatigue Life Prediction of Fiber-Reinforced Laminated Composites

The purpose of this study is to define a piecewise fatigue damage model (PFDM) for the prediction of damage in composite laminates under cyclic loading based on the continuum damage mechanics (CDM) model. Assuming that damage in fiber-reinforced plastic structures accumulates nonlinearly, a piecewise degradation growth function is defined and coupled with CDM and micromechanics approaches. The model divides the damage behavior of fiber, matrix, and fiber/matrix debonding at the ply scale, into three different stages. For generality, a fully multi-stage damage formulation on a single-ply level is employed. The unknown parameters of the PFDM are estimated according to obtained experimental data of damage mechanisms associated with the composites laminate under cyclic loading. To predict multidirectional composite laminates' fatigue life, the proposed model was implemented in Abaqus software by the subroutine. In a validation against experimental data on carbon fiber reinforced material, the model proves to provide a good numerical approximation of the damage during the fatigue loading. The results reveal that by considering the multi-stage process in stiffness reduction, the proposed model can estimate the fatigue life of composite laminate under multiaxial cyclic loading conditions more accurately than the similar model in the literature.