Identification and prediction of cyclic fatigue behaviour in sandwich panels

Abstract The work describes the development of analytical model to identify and predict the cyclic fatigue behaviour of composite sandwich panels subjected to cyclic fatigue loading under 3-point bending conditions. Sandwich samples made from CFRP skin and Nomex core have been loaded with a mean displacement corresponding to 60% of the failure deformation, and subsequently subjected to cyclic loading under displacement control with different loading levels. The fatigue tests show that the stiffness degradation over the number of cycles is characterised by three different phases according to the loading level used. The evolution of the energy dissipated per unit volume versus the number of cycles has also been considered. The cyclic history of the stiffness degradation is developed here following an alternative approach to the one currently adopted. The approach involves the use of interpolation through empirical functions of the experimental data, with the coefficients of the interpolation based on the material properties of the sandwich structure and the type of loading. The alternative modelling approach presented in this work allows the prediction of the fatigue behaviour in sandwich structures without using a large number of test data currently needed in fatigue testing of sandwich panels.

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