Fatigue behavior analysis and multi-scale modelling of chopped carbon fiber chip-reinforced composites under tension-tension loading condition

Abstract In present study, the fatigue damage behavior of chopped carbon fiber chip-reinforced composite has been experimentally and numerically investigated. A large scatter is exhibited in the S-N diagram due to the random distribution of carbon fiber chips, and therefore a new analysis procedure is proposed to link the local microstructure to the fatigue behavior of the bulk material. Interrupted fatigue tests are also performed so that microstructure characterization can be conducted on the tested samples to analyze the crack initiation and propagation. Inspired from the experimental findings, a multi-scale progressive damage fatigue model is proposed to predict the fatigue behavior. The model incorporates a new stochastic chip-packing algorithm for microstructure reconstruction along with continuum damage models into the representative volume element (RVE) model in ABAQUS/Explicit. The simulation results based on the proposed model are in good agreement with the experimental data in terms of cracking modes and predicted life.