Progressive Fatigue Damage Modeling of Cross-ply Laminates, II: Experimental Evaluation

This article presents the results of an experimental investigation of static and fatigue behavior of unidirectional and cross-ply T700/Cycom 890 composite laminates. Test specimens are fabricated by using vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding technique. The ply configurations are: unidirectional [0 10 ] and [90 10 ] and cross-ply ([0/90] 4s , [0/90 5 /0], and [0/90 4 ] s ) composites. Unidirectional specimens are tested under static and fatigue conditions to provide fundamental input data to run the progressive fatigue damage model developed in the first part of this article. To evaluate the capability of the progressive fatigue damage model, cross-ply laminates are tested under static and fatigue loading. The comparison between model predictions and the experiments shows a good correlation.