Fatigue life prediction of composite materials under constant amplitude loading

Abstract: This chapter describes a practical method of efficiently predicting the fatigue lives of composite materials for different values of stress ratio. It focuses on the constant fatigue life (CFL) diagram to predict the S–N curves for composites under different constant amplitude fatigue loading conditions. A particular emphasis is placed on a most general CFL diagram, called the anisomorphic CFL diagram, that allows efficiently identifying the mean stress sensitivity in a non-Goodman type of fatigue behavior of composites. An extended version of the anisomorphic CFL diagram that shows higher flexibility and thus allows better prediction is also presented.