Research on vibration fatigue of carbon fibre-reinforced composites under non-Gaussian random load

Abstract

It has been always a difficult problem about how to predict and evaluate the fatigue life of composite material structure in the academia and engineering. Besides, the vibration fatigue of it has not been deeply developed so far. A typical carbon fibre-reinforced plastic (CFRP) cantilevered laminate specimen was designed in this paper. The vibration fatigue of it under non-Gaussian vibration load was studied through the vibration testing in a close-loop controlled vibration test system. A method of monitoring the fatigue damage accumulation of carbon fibre-reinforced composites was proposed and verified. The experimental results show that the CFRP structure will suffer vibration fatigue under the realistic random load. Compare with the Gaussian vibration load, the non-Gaussian load has a significant influence on the vibration fatigue life of composite material structure.