Online and Ex Situ Damage Characterization Techniques for Fiber-Reinforced Composites under Ultrasonic Cyclic Three-Point Bending.

With ultrasonic fatigue testing (UFT), it is possible to investigate the damage initiation and accumulation from the weakest link of the composite material in the very high cycle fatigue (VHCF) regime in a shorter time frame than conventional fatigue testing. However, the thermal influence on the mechanical fatigue of composites and the scatter in fatigue data for composites under ultrasonic cyclic three-point bending loading still need to be investigated. In this study, we conducted interrupted constant-amplitude fatigue experiments on a carbon-fiber satin-fabric reinforced in poly-ether-ketone-ketone (CF-PEKK) composite material.

Stress and strain calculation method for orthotropic polymer composites under axial and bending ultrasonic fatigue loads.

Accelerated fatigue testing is one potential solution to evaluate the very high cycle fatigue behavior of composite materials within a reasonable amount of time. The ultrasonic fatigue testing methodology can be adopted to realize fatigue experiments up to 10 cycles at 20 kHz, compared to conventional fatigue experiments usually carried out between 5-50 Hz. The determination of cyclic stresses during ultrasonic loading remains to be one of the major challenges.

Influence of Pulse-Pause Sequences on the Self-Heating Behavior in Continuous Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Composites under Ultrasonic Cyclic Three-Point Bending Loads.

Several studies have been conducted in the Very High Cycle Fatigue (VHCF) regime on Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) in search of their fatigue limit beyond their typical service life, which is itself in the order of 10 loading cycles. The ultrasonic fatigue test (UFT) method has been recently gaining attention for conducting fatigue experiments up to 10 loading cycles. This can be attributed to the reduction of testing time, as the testing facility operates at a cyclic frequency of 20 kHz.