Delamination growth behavior of a fabric reinforced laminated composite under Mode I fatigue

The purpose of this study is to investigate the delamination growth behavior of a glass fabric reinforced laminated composite under Mode I fatigue loading and to examine the applicability of a new fatigue crack growth rate model to this material. In this study, double cantilever beam specimens were subjected to tension-tension cyclic loads with three different load ratios and the delamination growth rate was measured using the compliance method. The delamination growth rate was related to the strain energy release rate during fatigue cycling by a power law equation that takes into account not only the effect of the strain energy release rate range, but also the effect of delamination growth at various stages of loading using a weight average strain energy release rate. It was observed that this new model can represent the delamination growth rate of the fabric reinforced laminated composite at three different load ratios in a single unifying curve.