Effects of Long-Term Thermal Cycling on Microcracking Behavior in Composite Materials

摘要

Thermally-induced microcrack accumulation and saturation for up to 3000 thermal cycles is studied. Analytical predictions of microcrack saturation density are presented for limited cross-ply laminate configurations. Experimentally determined microcrack densities are presented for these cross-ply configurations and for more general quasi-isotropic laminate configurations. The effect of fiber stiffness, layer thickness, and thermal cycling range are included in these results.