Fatigue behaviour and life prediction of filament wound CFRP pipes based on coupon tests

摘要

This paper investigates the fatigue behaviour of filament wound Toray T700/Epotech X4201 composite pipes with different lay-ups. The present work compares the fatigue behaviour of coupon specimens manufactured with two different fiber orientations under tension-tension and tension-compression cyclic actions. The test results show that the lay-up and stress ratio have significant effect on the failure mechanism and fatigue life of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite coupons. This paper develops an empirical model, which integrates the effect of stress ratio in a fatigue damage parameter, to evaluate the fatigue life of the CFRP filament wound coupons. Combined with the numerically calculated stresses at the critical locations corresponding to the fatigue damage locations, the proposed empirical model developed from the coupon test database predicts successfully the fatigue life of full diameter CFRP pipes, using stresses computed at critical locations in the CFRP pipe.