Fatigue behavior of unidirectional fiber-reinforced pultruded composites with high volume fiber fraction

Abstract

Pultrusion is a high-volume manufacturing process for fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites ensuring high strength and quality products. However, research studies are very limited on the fatigue behavior of these products, especially with unidirectional fiber alignment. This study investigates the fatigue behavior of the unidirectional pultruded glass FRP (GFRP) composites with high fiber volume fraction ((Formula presented.)). Tension–tension fatigue loading was applied with different levels of applied stress, frequency, and gripping condition until failure. Results showed that the high (Formula presented.) composites have significantly low fatigue life cycle. Moreover, increasing the frequency showed better fatigue resistance, while the tabs geometry has insignificant effect on the fatigue behavior of the dog-bone shaped specimens. Comparison with available literature showed that GFRP composites with high (Formula presented.) have lower fatigue performance than those with low (Formula presented.). A fatigue capacity reduction factor is also proposed for unidirectional GFRP composites as a function of the (Formula presented.).