Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987

An empirical fatigue-life model for high-performance fibre composites

with and without impact damage
M.H. Beheshty 1, B. Harris*, T. Adam
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
Received 3 July 1998; received in revised form 11 January 1999; accepted 27 January 1999

Abstract
This article follows earlier work on the development of a life-prediction method for carbon-fibre/epoxy laminates. For comparison with the
behaviour of a number of different CFRP laminates already studied, further constant-life fatigue data have now been obtained for a further
CFRP composite and a GRP laminate of similar construction – a 16-ply [(^45,02)2]S lay-up. Fatigue tests have been carried out on these
materials in both the virgin condition and after damage by low-velocity impacts. Following analysis of these new data and a re-examination
of the older data base, the constant-life model has been appropriately modified. It now offers a prediction procedure for the fatigue response
of composite materials in the virgin and impact-damaged conditions which requires, in the first instance, only the tensile and compressive
strengths of the composite in question. The model is equally applicable to both GRP and CFRP, despite the fact that the fatigue response of a
GRP laminate is different from that of an equivalent CFRP material. q 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: A. Polymer-matrix composites (PMCs); B. Fatigue; B. Impact behaviour; B. Mechanical properties; Fatigue-life prediction

1. Introduction An important factor limiting the design of fibre-compo-

In the course of a series of research programmes carried
out at the University of Bath [1–11] we have studied the
fatigue behaviour of a number of carbon-fibre-reinforced
plastics (CFRP) with a view to establishing a life-prediction
procedure that could be used with confidence by designers
even in the absence of a complete data base of experimental
results – for example, in the case of a relatively newly
developed composite system which had not yet been
subjected to a rigorous fatigue-testing programme. Previous
publications from this group illustrate the progress of this
work and of the development of a life-prediction model for
use with five CFRP laminates, namely T800/5245 [7], HTA/
913, T800/924 and IM7/977 [10] and HTA/982 [11]. Most
of this work relates to laminates having the lay-up
[(^45,02)2]S, a construction considered to be of general
interest for aeronautical applications, although it is perhaps
worth emphasising that the life-prediction model was
originally developed for results obtained for unidirectional
hybrid laminates of carbon and Kevlar-49 [1].
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 1 44-01225-826448; fax: 1 44-01225-
826098.
E-mail address: b.harris@bath.ac.uk (B. Harris)
1
Present address: Iran Polymer Institute, P.O. Box 14185/458, Tehran-
Karaj Autoba 15Km, Pajohesh Boulevard, Tehran, Iran.
1359-835X/99/$ - see front matter q 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S1359-835 X( 99)00 009-3
site structures is their relative weakness under impact [12].
They suffer damage from localized impact loading [13], and
may contain barely-visible damage which impairs the struc-
tural integrity of the component [14]. Low-velocity impact
damage is inevitable and is often undetectable by eye, and
many research programs have been carried out in an attempt
to obtain better understanding of the impact response of
composite materials [13,14]. In recent years there has also
been work on the fatigue response of impact-damaged mate-
rials [15–18], but the behaviour of these materials under a
wide range of loading conditions from pure tension to pure
compression cycling has not been extensively studied. The
influences of low-velocity impact damage on the fatigue life
and reliability of the affected structure are therefore not well
characterized and the post-impact fatigue behaviour is still
unlikely to be understood, even for a material for which the
fatigue response in the undamaged state is well known.
Our work on fatigue-life prediction has therefore now
been extended to achieve two further objectives. The first
of these was to assess the possibility of using the life-predic-
tion model for glass-fibre-reinforced plastics (GRP) as well
as for the CFRP previously studied, and the second was to
explore the effect of damage from low-velocity impacts on
the fatigue response, as characterized by the constant-life
model. Presentations of preliminary results were given at
two recent conferences [19,20].
972 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987

Table 1
Experimental materials and their sources

Material Fibre Matrix Supplier

HTA/913 ENKA high-strength, standard-modulus Tenax fibre BSL 913 standard epoxy (low-T cure) Ciba-Geigy (UK)
HTA/982 ENKA high-strength, standard-modulus Tenax fibre modified epoxy resin (low-T cure) Fiberite (Europe)
T800/5245 Toray intermediate-modulus, high-failure-strain fibre Narmco epoxy/bis-maleimide BASF (Europe)
T800/924 Toray intermediate-modulus, high-failure-strain fibre Ciba 924 high-strain, toughened epoxy (high-T cure) Ciba-Geigy (UK)
IM7/977 Hercules intermediate-modulus, high-failure-strain fibre 977 modified epoxy Fiberite (Europe)
E-glass/913 Standard E-glass fibre BSL 913 standard epoxy (low-T cure) Ciba-Geigy (UK)

2. Materials and experimental methods 2 mm/min. Compression tests on virgin samples and post-
impact compression tests were carried out in a 100 kN
Although all necessary experimental details have been servo-hydraulic Instron Model 1342 testing machine at a
given in earlier article [7,10,11], a summary is provided fixed loading rate of 20 kN/min, anti-buckling fixtures of
here for the sake of completeness. the kind described by Curtis [21] being used to support
the coupons during compression loading so as to prevent
2.1. Laminates macro-buckling. The monotonic tensile tests on 40 mm
wide samples were carried out under load control in a
The carbon-fibre laminates for which detailed results
200 kN servo-hydraulic Mayes test machine model DH
have already been described in the articles listed include
200, again at a rate of 20 kN/min.
materials containing a variety of different fibres and
Fatigue tests were carried out in 100 kN servo-hydraulic
matrices, but all of the same 16-ply [(^45,02)2]S lay-up.
Instron 1300 series machines under load control at R ratios
They include HTA fibre in 913 and 982 epoxy resins,T800
varying from 10.1 or 10.5 (repeated tension), through the
fibre in 5245 and 924 resins, and IM7 fibre in 977 resin.
fully reversed condition (R ˆ 21.0) to repeated compres-
Thus, although we had no control over the nature and extent
sion (R ˆ 110). Usually, five or more replicate tests were
of the commercial fibre surface treatments used in the manu-
carried out at several stress levels. Post-impact fatigue tests
facture of the prepregs, these combinations allowed us to
at an R ratio of 10.1 were carried out, also under load
make reasonable comparisons between materials and exam-
control, in the 200 kN Mayes machine, and anti-buckling
ine the effects of materials variables on fatigue performance.
fixtures were again used for compression–compression or
For reference, Table 1 collects details of these materials and
tension–compression fatigue tests. All fatigue tests were
their suppliers, including data from previous articles. The
run at frequencies between 2.5 and 8 Hz with constant-
GRP material was an E-glass/913-epoxy composite of the
amplitude sine-wave loading, under ambient laboratory
same lay-up as the CFRP laminates.
conditions.
The composite prepregs were all notionally zero-bleed
Impact damage was introduced into the test samples by
materials, the laminates being processed according to the
means of a purpose-built, falling-weight test instrument
manufacturers’ recommendations. All materials except for
with a 12.7 mm diameter hemispherical tup, based on BS
the HTA/982 and E-glass/913, which were hot pressed at
2782, part 3, method 353A. The mass of the impacter was
Bath, were autoclaved at DERA Farnborough to a nominal
0.248 kg for 1 J and 2 J impacts, the impact energy being
thickness of 2 mm. Test pieces were cut to dimensions of
varied by changing the drop height. Impact events at 3 J and
200 mm long by 20 or 40 mm wide with a water-cooled
5 J were made from a constant height of 1 m by changing
diamond-wheel saw. The 20 mm wide samples were used
the mass of the impacter. During the impact event the speci-
for establishing the fatigue behaviour of the virgin lami-
men was clamped between two steel rings of internal
nates, while the 40 mm-wide samples were used for impact
diameter 30 mm and the impact head was captured on
tests and for post-impact fatigue tests. The cut edges of the
rebound after impact to prevent secondary strikes.
samples were lightly polished and, after abrasion of the end
surfaces, end tabs of 1.5 mm thick soft aluminium were
glued on with Ciba Geigy Redux 403 epoxy-resin paste,
the adhesive being cured in a dry oven at 408C for 24 h.
3. Experimental results
The central gauge sections of the test samples were 100 mm
long.
3.1. Monotonic mechanical properties
2.2. Experimental techniques
A summary of the monotonic test data for all laminates
Measurements of the monotonic tensile properties were used in this programme is given in Table 2. In anticipation
carried out on the 20 mm-wide samples in a universal of the analysis to be presented later, we draw the reader’s
Instron Model 1195 machine at a cross-head speed of attention to the differences in the values of the ratio of the
 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987 973

Table 2
Monotonic mechanical properties of experimental laminates (standard deviations in brackets)

Material Vf Tensile modulus, Tensile strength, Tensile failure Compression Ratio of

GPa s t, GPa strain (%) strength, compression
s c, GPa strength to tensile
strength (c)

HTA/913 a 0.53 72.4 (4.8) 1.27 (0.05) 1.7 (0.1) 0.97 (0.08) 0.77
HTA/982 0.54 80.1 (8.5) 1.20 (0.05) 1.5 (0.1) 0.84 (0.08) 0.76
T800/5245 a 0.69 94.0 (3.1) 1.67 (0.09) 1.7 (0.1) 0.88 (0.10) 0.53
T800/924 a 0.67 92.0 (8.0) 1.42 (0.09) 1.5 (0.1) 0.90 (0.09) 0.63
IM7/977 a 0.67 90.2 (11.3) 1.43 (0.07) 1.5 (0.1) 0.90 (0.07) 0.63
E-glass/913 0.55 34.0 (2.2) 0.77 (0.03) 3.4 (0.3) 0.46 (0.02) 0.60
E-glass/913 b 0.55 34.0 (2.2) 0.86 (0.03) 3.4 (0.3) 0.60 (0.02) 0.70
a
Data for asterisked laminates are from Ref. [10].
b
Strength values obtained at the same loading rate as in fatigue tests.

compression strength to the tensile strength shown in this
table.
The effect of low-velocity impact damage on the strength
of the HTA/982 laminate has already been shown [11], but a
comparison can now be made of the effects on three of the
experimental materials under investigation, as shown in Fig.
1. Error bars are shown only for the tensile-strength data: the
experimental scatter on the residual compression strength
values was very small, less than the size of the plotting
symbol in fact. It can be seen that the tensile strengths of
these materials are largely unaffected by impacts up to 5 J.
The line drawn through the residual tensile strength points
in Fig. 1, a least-squares line through all of the data, has a
very small slope of 20.007 J 21. The variations from point to
point are well within the overall scatter. Tai et al. [22] also
recently presented results on the fatigue behaviour of an
impact-damaged CFRP laminate. They studied a 2 mm-
thick, quasi-isotropic carbon/epoxy laminate, giving no
indication of fibre or resin type, and they carried out only
repeated-tension fatigue tests at R ˆ 0.1. For their material,
the residual tensile strength fell more dramatically than
those of the materials shown in our Fig. 1. They found
that increasing the impact energy widened the Weibull
distribution and extended the lower limit of the distribution.
An impact event of 0.653 J caused a relatively small change
but the effect increased with increasing impact energy. They
used the median-rank procedure and maximum-likelihood
estimates (MLEs) to obtain the distribution parameters, but
although they quote a shape-factor value of l < 40 for the
undamaged tensile strength—substantially higher than the
average of about 25 for the tensile strengths of all of our
CFRP materials—they do not give values for the damaged
laminates.
Fig. 1 shows that the compression strengths, by contrast,
are strongly affected by impact events of very low energy, as
is well known. The GRP appears to be much more resistant
to impact damage than the CFRP and the material shows the
threshold effect, at about 1 J, which is a familiar aspect of
the impact response of laminates [23]. No curves are drawn
through the compression data, but it seems likely that the
HTA/982 would also show a threshold somewhere between
0 and 1 J. The normalized responses of the two CFRP
composites are identical, and it appears, therefore, that
small differences in fibre content, processing conditions
and matrix character do not greatly alter the nature of the
impact damage in materials of this kind. The CFRPs lose
some 65% of their initial compression resistance after
impacts as low as 3 J. By contrast, the GRP composite
loses about 45% of its impact resistance at an energy level
of 5 J.

3.2. Fatigue response

3.2.1. Stress/life curves

Fig. 1. Effect of low-velocity impact on the residual compression and
tensile strengths of HTA/913 and HTA/982 CFRP laminates and E-glass/
913 (data are normalized with respect to the strength of the undamaged
material). All three laminates are of lay-up [(^45,02)2]S. Open symbols ˆ
compression; closed symbols ˆ tension.
Typical stress/life fatigue curves for all of the virgin
CFRP laminates listed in Table 1 have been presented else-
where [7,10,11] but it is appropriate, here, to provide a
comparison of the behaviour of the newly-tested GRP mate-
rial with that of the equivalent HTA/913 carbon composite.
Accordingly, in Fig. 2 we show stress/life data for these two
materials at various R ratios. The stress values represented,
974 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987
Fig. 2. s /log Nf data for an E-glass/913 [(^45,02)2]S laminate, together
with stress/median-life curves for an HTA/913 carbon-fibre composite of
similar lay-up (dashed lines). The solid curves through the GRP data points
are best-fit polynomial curves.
which we refer to as the peak stresses, are the maximum
values reached in the cycle. Thus, for R ratios between 21
and 10.5, they are the maximum tensile stresses, and are
positive, whereas for the repeated compression stress cycles
they are the maximum compression stresses and are nega-
tive. Other representations could have been used, but this
convention allows uncluttered representations on s /log Nf
diagrams. The fatigue data points represent the replicate
fatigue lives for the GRP composite, and the curves drawn
through the points are best-fit polynomial curves of order
two or three. The dashed lines are stress/median-life curves
for the HTA/913 laminate taken from Ref. [10]. The points
on the extreme left of some of these data sets or curves (i.e.
at a notional ‘life’ of one-half cycle) represent the mono-
tonic tensile or compression strength of the material. They
are shown as positive for tensile strengths and negative for
compression strengths. The selection of R ratios represented
here is slightly different for the two materials, partly
Fig. 3. s /log Nf data for an HTA/982 CFRP laminate of [(^45,02)2]S lay-up
after damage by low-velocity impacts of 1 J (solid symbols) and 2 J (open
symbols). The lines are polynomial curves fitted to the data for the virgin
laminate [11].
Fig. 4. s /log Nf data for an E-glass/913 [(^45,02)2]S laminate. The lines are
polynomial curves fitted to test data for the undamaged laminate (taken
from Fig. 2), and the symbols are actual data for samples with prior damage
from a 2 J low-velocity impact event.
because of the changes in our experimental approach in
these most recent experiments, and partly in order to
avoid confusion as a result of overlapping of the data.
The difference in the intrinsic load-bearing ability of the
two species of reinforcing fibre is clearly manifested by the
fact that all of the GRP fatigue curves fall inside the general
envelope defined by the s /log Nf curves for the carbon
composite. It can also be seen that whereas most of the
CFRP s /log Nf curves for mainly tensile loading are
concave downwards, the reverse is true of the GRP curves.
The responses of the carbon and glass composites in
repeated compression are also different. The s /log Nf curves
for R ˆ 110 for most of the CFRP laminates studied in this
work are flatter and straighter, as shown in Fig. 2. The GRP
curve, however, is curving upwards quite rapidly towards
the zero-stress axis, within the experimental window of this
work, implying a greater sensitivity to fatigue damage in
compression than that of the CFRP.
The effects of prior damage on the fatigue behaviour of
the HTA/982 and E-glass/913 laminates are shown, respec-
tively, in Figs. 3 and 4. For the carbon-fibre composite, the
effects of both 1 J and 2 J impacts are shown, and data are
included for three R ratios. For the glass/epoxy laminate,
however, as impacts of only 2 J were studied, fatigue data
are included for four R ratios. It can be seen that impacts of
1 J and 2 J have no effect on the fatigue lives of the CFRP in
repeated-tension cycling (R ˆ 0.1). In mixed-mode cycling
at R ˆ 20.3, however, the effect of the impact damage on
the compression resistance of the composite can already be
seen, even at 1 J, the data points falling below the s /log Nf
curve for the undamaged material. After a 2 J impact event,
the effect of the damage is very marked. As expected from
the results in Fig. 1, the effects of the impact damage are
most marked in a repeated compression régime (R ˆ 110),
the stress/life curve being flattened and lowered by both 1 J
and 2 J impacts. For the glass/epoxy material, the effects of
 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987
the impact damage seem less severe, even for fully reversed
cycling (R ˆ 21.0), although for repeated-compression
conditions, the effects appear to be just as marked as for
the CFRP laminate.
In their work on repeated-tension fatigue of a quasi-
isotropic carbon/epoxy laminate, Tai et al. [22] showed
that the s /log Nf curve for composites damaged at 1.1 J
had a reduced data spread, implying a higher value of the
Weibull shape factor, l , (although they quoted no l values
for the fatigued materials) in addition to the steeper slopes
that we have also observed. They have also noted that the
effect of damage was more marked at lower stress levels and
was hardly significant at higher stresses. They suggest that
this is because high-stress fatigue is fibre-dominated and, as
impact causes no fibre damage, there is therefore no effect
on high-stress fatigue. At low stresses, however, the link
between prior delamination caused by the impact events
and fatigue delamination at free edges was apparent after
about 10 000 cycles.
3.2.2. Pooling of data
The concept of the pooling of normalized fatigue lives is
of importance in offering the designer a means of assessing
the likely reduction in the life of a laminate that has
sustained impact damage. As discussed in earlier articles
[7,10,11], for a wide range of carbon-fibre composites the
Weibull shape parameter, l , for such pooled distributions
appears to lie in the range 1 , l , 2, with relatively less
variation that can be unambiguously ascribed to differences
in materials characteristics (type of fibre, matrix, etc.).
There are two features of this pooling procedure that are
potential sources of difficulty and which may be re-exam-
ined in the light of these latest results: the first is the basis
of the normalization and the second is the procedure for
estimating the Weibull parameters from the pooled
distributions.
If the results of a number of replicate experiments in each
of which there are, say, ten or more test results, are avail-
able, it is perhaps reasonable to make the assumption that
the groups of replicate fatigue lives obey a two-parameter
Weibull model and then use a simple least-squares proce-
dure to obtain the characteristic values, or scale parameters,
b , of each data set. At this stage, a value for the slope, l (the
shape parameter), is not needed, and an indicator of central
tendency like b may be obtained to a reasonable degree of
accuracy in this way. The values of b for each stress level
may then be used as the normalizing parameter. We used
this procedure in an earlier article dealing with a T800/5245
CFRP laminate [7], and even though some of the data sets
contained only four or five fatigue lives, the result of the
normalization appeared to be satisfactory. Subsequently, we
revised our approach on the ground that it was more legit-
imate to use an experimental normalization parameter rather
than the calculated b value, and we used the median values
of the replicate data sets instead. This procedure gave results
that were very little different from those obtained by
975
normalization with respect to b [10,11], but it gave rise to
some distortion of the distribution because any data set
which contains an odd number of data points will yield a
value of unity in the normalized data set and the pooled
distribution will then contain a step at an abscissa value of
1.0. Whether or not this makes a significant difference to the
outcome of the analysis then depends on the robustness of
the statistical procedure used to estimate the distribution
parameters. In our current work with damaged laminates,
some difficulty was encountered in obtaining consistent
results, and we have therefore re-analyzed all data in our
data base by using the mean values of the replicate data sets
instead of the median values. The resulting pooled distribu-
tion curves were all much smoother as a result, and, as we
shall show, the degree of consistency obtained by the use of
a number of different parameter estimation methods is much
greater. The mean-rank method was used to obtain the plot-
ting position, i=…N 1 1†, where i is rank number and N is the
number of observations in the distribution.
There is disagreement about which of the several possible
methods available for determining the parameters of a
Weibull distribution is the most appropriate. Freudenthal
and Gumbel [24,25] used the method of moments proposed
by Weibull [26], but King [27] observes that it is not a very
efficient method and claims that it is not used for composite
materials. Whitney [33] used the MLE, whereas Castillo
[36] suggests that because of the peculiar behaviour of the
Weibull distribution for 1 , l , 2, the MLE is not appro-
priate for Weibull distributions with l , 2 although it is
highly recommended elsewhere because it gives the lowest
variability. Talreja [28] rejected the MLE approach in
favour of the use of a standardized variable, suggesting a
lower limiting value of l of about 10 for the valid use of
MLEs. By contrast, in a recent analysis of large single-stress
data sets for ud and [(^45,02)2]S laminates of HTA/982, Lee
et al. [29] confirmed that, of a range of estimates obtained by
the use of an expert system developed by Castillo et al. [30],
the MLE gave the lowest level of variability.
With these uncertainties in mind, we have re-analysed all
of the fatigue-life data sets obtained at the University of
Bath over a period of about ten years in order to provide a
good background against which to discuss the most recent
results on impact-damaged laminates. Two commercial
software packages were used to do this, the more versatile
of which is Mathcad [31]. A procedure was developed in
which five estimates were made, starting with the simplest,
progressing to the more sophisticated, and feeding the
results from earlier estimates as initiation values for subse-
quent calculations. This is particularly useful for some MLE
calculations which are sensitive to suggested initiation
values, or ‘guesses’, and may fail to converge if these are
not reasonably close to the actual distribution parameters.
The estimates made in this way included three which
assumed a two-parameter Weibull model (i.e. with the loca-
tion parameter, a , deliberately set to zero), and two where
the software was allowed to optimize all three constants, a ,
 976

Table 3
Estimates of the Weibull shape parameter, l , for virgin and impact-damaged laminates, obtained by several methods

Material Condition Number Value of the Weibull shape parameter, l

designation of lives
2-Parameter model 3-Parameter model Overall

Linear Method of Maximum Non-linear regression Maximum Average cv %

least moments likelihood likelihood value
squares
Least L-M a
squares

T800/5245 Virgin 164 1.11 1.20 1.18 1.19 1.19 1.16 1.17 3
T800/924 Virgin 88 1.65 1.42 1.50 1.31 1.56 1.32 1.46 9
IM7/977 Virgin 93 1.14 1.21 1.21 1.20 1.23 1.15 1.19 3
HTA/913 Virgin 88 1.53 1.65 1.63 1.77 1.33 1.48 1.56 10
HTA/982 Virgin 122 0.83 1.14 1.01 1.09 1.04 1.01 1.02 10
E-glass/913 Virgin 47 1.63 1.42 1.60 1.76 1.71 1.65 1.63 7
HTA/913 2 J damage 41 0.71 0.92 0.85 0.88 0.88 0.88 0.85 8
b
HTA/982 1 J damage 62 0.67 0.79 0.70 0.66 0.61 0.69 10
HTA/982 2 J damage 43 0.78 1.09 0.97 1.06 0.95 1.02 0.98 11
M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987

E-glass/913 2 J damage 47 1.42 1.95 1.82 2.61 2.96 2.13 2.15 26

a
LM routine (Origin software). All other estimates obtained from Mathcad software.
b
No convergence.
 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987
b and l , in a three-parameter Weibull distribution. For the
two-parameter model, the methods used were the simple
linear least-squares procedure (x on y regression, following
the recommendation of Abernethy [32], rather than the
usual y on x), the method of moments, and a MLE. For
the three-parameter model, two estimates were obtained,
one by a non-linear error minimization routine and the
second by another maximum-likelihood calculation, both
of which used the Mathcad ‘MINERR’ function to obtain
the required solutions. A sixth estimate for the three-para-
meter case was obtained by means of the Levenberg–
Marquardt (LM) non-linear least-squares routine embodied
in the commercial Origin graphing and analysis package by
Microcal Software Inc. The results from these analyses are
summarized in Table 3.
Experimental data for the first four of the materials given
in the table are from Ref. [10], and those for the undamaged
HTA/982 laminate were first presented in Ref. [11]. Only
the shape parameter values are given here because the
values of the scale parameter, b , returned by all procedures
for all materials were, as expected, close to unity (about 1.05
for the undamaged CFRP laminates and 1.13 for the virgin
GRP), and the values of the location parameter, a , returned
for the three-parameter models were always sufficiently
close to zero to be ignored. The inclusion in this table of a
notional ‘mean’ and ‘coefficient of variation’ for the six
separate values is merely to give a feeling for the compar-
ability of the different estimates. The routine to obtain the
three-parameter MLE failed to converge in only one case,
that for the HTA/982 composite with 1 J impact damage,
and converged only with great difficulty in the case of the
undamaged T800/924 laminate.
Comparison of the results for the first four materials in
Table 3 with previously published values obtained by the
LM routine suggests that the use of the data-set mean values
for normalization has had no marked or consistent effect on
the estimation of the distribution parameters. For the
undamaged laminates, for which the largest amounts of
data were available, the degree of consistency between the
six estimates is unexpectedly high. The three-parameter
MLE is close to the average value in almost every case,
and even the method of moments has provided values
close to the other estimates, whereas we had previously
found it to be unreliable. No indications of goodness of fit
are given in Table 3, but the root mean-square errors for all
calculations except those involving the simple linear least-
squares method were between 1 and 4%. By contrast,
although the correlation coefficients for all the linear least-
squares fits for the virgin materials were always greater than
0.95, the RMS errors of the fits were usually much higher
than those for the remaining five estimates, namely between
10 and 20%. This higher level of error of the fit for the two-
parameter least-squares estimates is frequently found, on
inspection of the plots, to be associated with a large degree
of variability in data points at the extreme left of the distri-
butions, usually tests showing unreasonably short life times
977
of the order of only a few tens of cycles. The effect of these
is strongly accentuated by the logarithmic scales. We have
sometimes censored these short-life results on the ground
that servo-hydraulic test machines will usually take a
hundred or so cycles to stabilize so that recorded lives less
than 100 cycles may be unreliable. However, such censor-
ing, which risks the exclusion of ‘good’ data, is unnecessary
when using any estimation method other than the linear
least-squares procedure. Despite the higher error, the values
obtained by this most common of methods for the virgin
laminates almost all fell within the range obtained by the
other techniques except in the case of the undamaged HTA/
982 laminate, where the slope of the regression line is less
than unity. Inspection of the data plot shows that the curve is
non-linear and the estimate of the slope is dominated by the
longer lives, which renders it questionable for the determi-
nation of minimum extreme-value parameters or low-
quantile life estimates.
Although the estimates shown in Table 3 for the five
undamaged laminates show a reasonably high degree of
consistency, it is difficult to single out a particular estima-
tion method as being universally the most appropriate for all
requirements. For the five undamaged CFRP laminates
almost all estimated values of l fall in the range 1.01–
1.77 apart from the suspect linear least-squares estimate
for HTA/982. The average values in this table do not appear
to correlate in any obvious way with the nature of the lami-
nate. The three lowest values are for two of the higher-
performance fibre composites and one lower-performance
fibre. The two highest values are for one high-performance
fibre/resin combination and one conventional combination.
There seems, therefore, to be no link between the l value
and the nature of either the resin or the fibre. The indication
is therefore that this group of values for the CFRP materials
are all more or less at the same level, at an average of about
1.3. We note that when using the median as the normalizing
parameter [11], the average value of l for all five
undamaged CFRP laminates was 1.39, with a coefficient of
variation of about 17%. The overall average for the same five
laminates in Table 3 is 1.28, with a cv of only about 5%.
Thus, it appears that while the use of the mean instead of the
median improves the consistency between estimates and the
smoothness of the distribution curves, it does not markedly
alter the numerical outcome of the calculations.
Although only one experimental GRP material was
tested, the results in Table 3 suggest that the value of the
Weibull shape parameter for this material is higher than the
highest values for the CFRP materials. One likely reason for
this class difference is simply that, for the most part, the
stress/life curves for CFRP materials are flatter than those
for GRPs, and the spread in any replicate data set is there-
fore usually smaller.
We commented in a recent article [11] on some prelimin-
ary results for fatigued samples of HTA/982 laminate which
had sustained impact damage of 1 J and we were concerned
that the damage led to a value of the Weibull shape
978 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987
Fig. 5. Probability plots of pooled normalized fatigue lives for [(^45,02)2]S
E-glass/913, HTA/913 and HTA/982 laminates in the virgin condition and
after low-velocity impacts. The lives for a given stress level are normalized
with respect to the mean life for the individual replicate data sets.
parameter less than unity, indicating a distribution with no
minimum life. Further fatigue results are now available for
the HTA/982, HTA/913, and E-glass/913 laminates with
damage caused by impact events of energy 2 J. Probability
plots of the pooled, normalized data sets for these damaged
materials are shown, together with the results for the equiva-
lent virgin laminates, in Fig. 5. These plots also show the
curves fitted by means of the LM routine for which the
distribution parameters, together with those obtained from
Mathcad, are given in Table 3. The new results for the
damaged CFRP laminates confirm the concern expressed
in Ref. [11] that the effect of prior damage does generally
seem to result in values of the shape parameter less than
unity. It is interesting to note that, by and large, all of the
methods of estimating the distribution parameters still
produce values of the distribution parameters that are not
too dissimilar, and although the variability between the esti-
mates is somewhat higher than for the undamaged samples,
the RMS errors returned by the software for the individual
estimates are only slightly larger than those for the virgin
materials. As indicated earlier, only in the case of the HTA/
982 with 1 J impact damage did the three-parameter MLE
calculation fail to converge. Thus, it appears that many of
the concerns that have been expressed from time to time
about the validity and robustness of MLE estimates for
values of l < 1 may not be sustainable.
From the designers’ view-point, however, the effect of the
impact damage appears to result in a higher proportion of
failures at short lives, extending the fatigue-life distributions
downwards and increasing the range, rather than simply
displacing the whole distribution downwards. As a conse-
quence, the left-hand ‘tail’ of the Weibull distribution is
modified, as illustrated in the lower two plots shown in
Fig. 5, the normal slight upward concavity being replaced
by downward concavity so that the derived probability
density function is exponential rather than Weibull, imply-
ing that there is apparently no minimum life. This is unlikely
to be true in practice, but it does suggest that care would
need to be exercised when using pooled distribution curves
to set design lives for damaged laminates.
By contrast, the opposite result is observed for the glass/
epoxy composite. After 2 J of prior impact damage, the
lower tail of the distribution (top plot in Fig. 5) is actually
emphasized and the estimated value of the shape parameter
is markedly raised to higher levels than we have yet
observed for any laminate, above 2 in fact. Given the appar-
ent similarities of the fatigue-test results for CFRP and GRP
shown in Figs. 3 and 4, it is not clear why there should
be such marked differences between the effects of prior
impact damage on the statistical parameters of the pooled
distributions.
4. Discussion
4.1. Statistical models
The level of consistency obtained from the various esti-
mates of the distribution parameters for the normalized life
data for the undamaged laminates is very high, as seen in
Table 3. But as we have already suggested, there seems to be
no obvious link between the values of the distribution shape
parameters, l , and other characteristics—strength, failure
strain, etc.—of the materials concerned. Neither are they
linked, as shown by the data in Table 4, to the variations
in the shape factors obtained from monotonic tensile tests,
although there is a general indication that the values
increase in a non-linear way with the compression-strength
l values.
The significance of a range of values of l from below
unity to greater than unity has been discussed by Abernethy
[32]. The region where l , 1, termed ‘infant mortality’ by
Abernethy, is typical of the behaviour of electronic and
mechanical systems which often have high initial failure
rates, perhaps as a consequence of production and assembly
problems, poor quality control, device failure, etc. These
high initial failure rates are often screened out in advance
of putting into service by ‘loading’ prior to delivery (as in
proof testing to weed out imperfect components or
 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987 979

Table 4
Values of the Weibull shape parameter, l , obtained in fatigue and monotonic strength tests on five CFRP laminates and one GRP laminate

Material Weibull shape parameter, l

In fatigue For compression strength For tensile strength

T800/5254 1.17 9.87 20.63

T800/924 1.46 10.12 17.44
IM7/977 1.19 13.95 24.14
HTA/913 1.56 14.78 28.82
HTA/982 1.02 7.36 25.59
E-glass/913 1.63 30.20 23.85

structures). As time passes, the failure rate decreases and of stress of the form:
reliability increases. A value of l ˆ 1 implies random fail-
ures, independent of time. Such failures may be due to a ˆ f …1 2 m†u …c 1 m†v ; …1†
foreign-object damage, lightning strike, human errors, etc.
where a is s alt /s t, the normalized alternating stress; m is
Values of 1 , l , 4 are typical of wear-out which is the
s m/s t, the normalized mean stress; and c is s c/s t, the
origin of many mechanical failures, including low-cycle
normalized compression strength, s t being the monotonic
fatigue, bearing failures, corrosion etc. and there is an
composite tensile strength. By convention, s c is taken as
increasing probability of failure with age (i.e. decreasing
negative, and c is therefore also negative. This is a bell-
reliability). For the most part, then, this categorization
shaped curve which is not necessarily symmetrically
applies reasonably well to the range of results obtained for
disposed relative to the alternating-stress axis (i.e. about
these laminates. The effect of impact events on the CFRP
m ˆ 0). The establishment of Eq. (1) has involved a number
laminates is to drive the value of the shape factor below
of modifications to the model, including early consideration
unity, suggesting that the damage caused by the
of a parabolic function (where the parameters u and v were
impacts—mainly matrix cracks and delaminations—
both equal to unity), but the model in the more general form
increases the likelihood of premature failures in addition
shown earlier is more widely applicable to a variety of
to reducing the general fatigue performance of a given lami-
materials.
nate: the two must be seen as distinct effects. The only
The three parameters f, u and v are dependent on the
inconsistency appears to be in the effect of impact damage
logarithm of life, Nf (the number of cycles to failure), but
on the reliability of the GRP laminate, for which the value of
are mutually independent. From early work it was apparent
the shape factor is increased as a result of the impact
that f mainly controlled the height of the curve, u the slope
damage. The variation between the different estimates is
of the contour in the ‘tensile’ mean stress zone and v the
much greater for the damaged GRP than for any other
slope in the ‘compressive’ mean stress zone. These para-
group of estimates. And although the two-parameter linear
meters were not originally thought to have any direct special
least-squares estimates for the virgin and damaged materials
significance in relation to the structure and properties of the
are quite similar, it is clear that all other estimation methods
material, although it did appear [10,11] that there might
give high values for the damaged laminate. It is unclear why
have been some relationship between f and the tensile
there should be such a difference in the responses of the
strength of the laminate. In previous publications we have
carbon and glass composites to impact damage.
illustrated the development of the constant-life model for
The work of Tai et al [22] also suggests that the pooled
use with five CFRP laminates, namely T800/5245 [7], HTA/
Weibull analysis procedure is valid for predicting lives of
913, T800/924 and IM7/977 [10] and HTA/982 [11], all
both damaged and undamaged material, at least insofar as
having the lay-up [(^45,02)2]S, a construction of general
can be judged from their more limited range of results in
interest for aeronautical applications. The procedures that
repeated tension.
have previously been used in the application of this model
may be summarised, as follows.
4.2. A constant-life model for fatigue-life prediction 1. Stress/life data are accumulated at several R ratios (s min/
s max): choice of an appropriate ‘life’ value requires
In the course of our previous work, a wide range of CFRP detailed consideration of statistical models suitable for
composites has been studied with the objective of assessing to the purpose of the analysis, or, more specifically, to the
the potential usefulness of the model and the likely level of design requirements related to safety considerations.
confidence in using it to make preliminary predictions of life 2. Suitable mathematical functions are fitted to the data:
from limited fatigue data sets. There appears to be a general second- or third-order polynomials have been used
relationship between the alternating and mean components hitherto, but more appropriate functions are possible.
980 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987
Fig. 6. Constant-life plots for: (a) E-glass/913 and (b) HTA/982 laminates of [(^45,02)2]S lay-up in the virgin condition. The curves, representing equation 1,
are best-fit curves obtained by a non-linear least squares algorithm.
3. Interpolations are made at selected lives (e.g. 10 4, 10 5
and 10 6 cycles) and data pairs (m, a) are calculated
from these interpolations at particular R ratios together
with previously measured tension and compression
strengths.
4. The data are plotted as an (m, a) diagram (such as those
to be discussed in Section. 4.2) and curves of the form of
Eq. (1) are fitted through the data points by non-linear
curve-fitting routines. Values of the parameters f, u and v
are evaluated, and their variations with log life are estab-
lished.
5. It is then possible to predict s /log Nf curves for any
desired R ratio by solving the pair of simultaneous
equations:
a ˆ f …Nf †…1 2 m†u…Nf † …c 1 m†v…Nf † ; …
 
12R
aˆm : …2b†
11R
The first of these equations is the constant-life equation,
(Eq. (1)), modified to include information about the life-
dependence of the two exponents, u(Nf) and v(Nf) and the
stress function f(Nf). The second equation is derived from
the conventional definition of the stress ratio. Until recently
we have used an average value of f in Eqs. (2a) and (2b),
assuming it to be roughly constant. The output of this analy-
sis can be in one of two forms, depending on the require-
ments of the user. The first is a three-dimensional
generalization of the constant-life (m, a) plot in the form
of a surface representation showing the full variation of (a,
m, log Nf). Alternatively, a family of stress/life curves of
conventional form can be produced for ranges of lives that
are consistent with the original experimental data window.
We are interested in offering the designer a conservative
predictive tool-one that will work with a minimum of
experimental data but which will allow continuous up-
dating of the predictions as more data become available.
For any given new material, an initial experimental
programme would be carried out to determine the mono-
tonic tension and compression strengths, together with
stress/life data for stress ratios of 10.1 and perhaps 21.2
in order to locate curves in the left-hand quadrant of the
constant-life diagram. Perhaps three replicate tests might
2a† be done initially at three stress levels for both R ratios. By
pooling the 15–20 fatigue lives so obtained, following the
descriptions of Whitney [33] and of Yang and Jones [34], a
trial value of the Weibull shape parameter, l , could be
obtained. A crude estimate could then be made of, say,
the characteristic value (Weibull scale parameter) or the
modal value of the distribution of minima for each stress
level. The latter could be obtained on the basis of the
extreme-value-theory premise [35,36] that the distribution
of the minima of a Weibull distribution with shape para-
meter l is also a Weibull distribution with shape parameter
l and characteristic value b=n1=l , where n is the size of the
sample and b is the scale parameter of the replicate test set.
The characteristic smallest values (or other appropriate
quantile values of life) would then be used to derive trial
 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987 981

Fig. 7. Constant-life plots for damaged [(^45,02)2]S laminates: (a) E-glass/913 glass/epoxy (closed symbols ˆ 2 J impact damage); (b) HTA/982 carbon/epoxy
(closed symbols ˆ 1 J impact damage; open symbols ˆ 2 J). The data points are shown only for the damaged materials in order to avoid confusion: the two sets
of curves without data points are the best-fit curves for the undamaged laminates from Fig. 6.

constant-life curves, with appropriate informed ‘guesses’
being made initially for the parameters f, u and v until suffi-
cient data were available to permit realistic curve fitting.
Initially, the statistical validity of the procedure would be
open to question, and would require careful testing before
serious use. However, as further data were acquired, the
validity would improve, together with the true predictive
capacity of the model.
4.3. Analysis of new results
Results of the analysis of the fatigue data for the HTA/
982 and E-glass/913 are shown in Fig. 6. The results shown
are for the undamaged laminates, over three decades of life
from 10 3 to 10 6 cycles. The curves shown in these and later
plots have all been obtained by the fitting of the three vari-
able parameters, f, u and v, in Eq. (1), without any
constraints. For the carbon-fibre laminate, Fig. 6(b), the
plot shows features more or less identical to those which
we have already described for other CFRP materials. In
particular, although the position of the peak values of the
normalized alternating stress, a, is shifted in the positive
direction along the mean stress (m) axis, the bell-shaped
curves for each of the four lives represented are quite
symmetrical about the peak. By contrast, the curves for
the GRP laminate are much less symmetrically disposed,
with respect to the extreme values of m (i.e. c and 1), than
any of the CFRPs that we have studied, although the peak
values of a occur almost exactly at m ˆ 0. Moreover,
because the original s /log Nf curves for repeated tension
and repeated compression (R ˆ 0.1 and 10) for the carbon
laminate are much flatter than the corresponding curves for
the GRP, the separation of the constant-life curves for the
latter is much greater in both the left and right quadrants of
the plots. It can be seen, nevertheless, that the constant-life
model works as well for the GRP as for the CFRPs, albeit
with different values of the fitting parameters, as we shall
see.
Some preliminary comments on the effects of impact
damage on the validity of the constant-life model were
made in Refs. [11,19,20]. At the time of writing those arti-
cles, only results for 1 J impact on the HTA/982 laminate
were available, but the more recent results reinforce our
earlier comments. Thus, the effects of 2 J impact events
on the behaviour of the E-glass/913 composite and the
effects of both 1 J and 2 J impacts on the behaviour of the
HTA/982 material are all shown in Fig. 7. Both data points
and fitted curves are shown for the impact-damaged lami-
nates, and these may be compared with the behaviour of the
corresponding undamaged materials, shown only as the sets
of fitted curves from Fig. 6. An important result is that the
constant-life model is equally as valid for the damaged as
for the virgin composites. In both materials, the predomi-
nant effect of prior impact is to impair the compressive load-
bearing ability of the laminate, and this is reflected in a
shifting of the left-hand regions of the curves towards the
origin, accompanied by a squeezing together of the points
on the R ˆ 10 radius vector, while in the purely tensile
982 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987

Table 5
Summary of values of constant-life fitting parameters and errors for undamaged CFRP and GRP laminates. (linked to Excel sheet)

Material Log life, f s.d. (f) u s.d. (u) v s.d. (v)

log cycles

T800/5245 3 1.49 0.24 2.10 0.27 1.92 0.25

4 1.34 0.22 2.11 0.28 1.93 0.25
5 1.16 0.18 2.04 0.26 1.93 0.24
6 0.99 0.12 1.94 0.19 2.00 0.19
T800/924 3 1.40 0.10 1.95 0.15 2.11 0.14
4 1.41 0.13 2.18 0.19 2.34 0.18
5 1.38 0.18 2.48 0.29 2.62 0.26
6 1.21 0.33 2.69 0.64 2.87 0.57
IM7/977 3 1.55 0.17 2.20 0.27 2.45 0.25
4 1.46 0.19 2.20 0.27 2.45 0.26
5 1.33 0.18 2.29 0.29 2.49 0.27
6 1.11 0.11 2.29 0.23 2.42 0.20
HTA/913 3 1.19 0.06 2.28 0.12 2.61 0.14
4 1.06 0.05 2.24 0.13 2.70 0.15
5 0.91 0.06 2.14 0.18 2.70 0.22
6 0.74 0.07 1.92 0.24 2.57 0.31
HTA/982 3 1.12 0.10 2.09 0.22 2.37 0.24
4 1.01 0.09 2.05 0.22 2.40 0.25
5 0.88 0.07 1.99 0.19 2.41 0.22
6 0.71 0.03 1.85 0.09 2.34 0.11
E-glass/913 3 0.96 0.10 2.81 0.29 1.98 0.22
4 0.96 0.09 3.57 0.28 2.36 0.20
5 0.96 0.21 4.49 0.70 2.95 0.51
6 0.84 0.52 4.97 1.98 3.59 1.57

regions the curves are largely unaffected. The overall shape
of the constant-life plot is apparently unchanged by the prior
damage, and the constant-life equation, Eq. (1), remains a
valid descriptor of the constant-life surface.
In order to build up a reasonable constant-life curve, we
require, in addition to the end data points representing the
monotonic tensile and compressive strengths, at least three
stress/life (s /log Nf) curves to permit the fitting of Eq. (1) by
allowing the three parameters f, u and v to take any values.
In constructing a life-prediction model, these three s /log Nf
curves must be appropriately chosen so as to restrict the
fitting operation in the left and right quadrants and at the
peak value of the bell-shaped constant-life plots. Our
experience with various materials now suggests that stress
ratios of 10.5, 20.6 and 110 for undamaged materials and
10.5, 20.3 and 110 for damaged materials may be the
appropriate curves to determine for fitting purposes,
although the precise choice may be different for other lami-
nates and other impact energies.
4.3.1. Values of constant-life parameters
Our approach to the evaluation of the parameters f, u and
v has changed somewhat since we first proposed the use of
the constant-life model. Initially, we allowed the curve-
fitting algorithm to find the values of all three parameters
which gave the best fits, as judged by calculated values of
the x 2 statistic returned by the programme. In the earlier
work, we found that all three parameters varied with log Nf,
although not very strongly, and, in seeking correlations
between the values of f, u and v and the physical character-
istics of the individual laminates, it seemed reasonable to
recalculate the values of u and v after fixing the value of f as
the mean for the three values of constant life being used at
the time. This procedure was used in Ref. [10], where it was
noted that for each of the four laminates studied the values
of u and v were all quite close to 2 and increased slightly
with log Nf. In the case of the HTA/913 laminate the
observed values of u and v and their dependences on
log Nf were slightly higher than those for the other three
higher-performance composites. But apart from these
small differences, there appeared to be no particular correla-
tion between the values of u and v and the characters of the
laminates. The observed values of f appeared to be directly
related to the tensile strengths of the laminates, however,
and this caused us puzzlement as the (m, a) data sets on
which the analysis is based are already normalized with
respect to laminate tensile strength.
In the light of earlier experience, we have now modified
our procedures. The accuracy of the fitting of the constant-
life curves (interpolation) and the validity of using them to
extrapolate, even to a limited extent, beyond the experimen-
tal window depends on the validity of the original polyno-
mial description of the s /log Nf curves. We now therefore fit
the polynomials to the complete data sets rather than to the
median-life values of a replicate test set, and we establish
the constant-life diagrams for four lives, 10 3, 10 4, 10 5 and
10 6 cycles, instead of the three lives that we used in earlier
 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987 983

of the CFRP, falling at the bottom of the band of results for

Fig. 8. Constant-life f parameter as a function of log Nf for virgin and
damaged CFRP laminates.
articles. Current values of the three fitting parameters for all
of our experimental laminates in the undamaged state,
including recalculations for older materials for which
further results have been obtained, are summarized in
Table 5. It can be seen that the values of f for the different
CFRP laminates in the undamaged condition are in all cases
quite similar and they all fall gently over the three decades
of life represented. This is illustrated graphically in Fig. 8,
which also shows values for damaged laminates which will
be discussed later. Values of the parameters u and v vary
rather less with life than f, and it can be seen from Table 5
that for the group of carbon-fibre composites the values are
all fairly close to 2, with only slight differences between u
and v. As we have said, for this group of materials this
indicates a reasonably high level of symmetry in the
constant-life curves. The level of spread in the fits of all
of these parameters is of the order of 10%: actual values
are given in Table 5. From the table we also see the contrast
between the carbon- and glass-fibre composites. Whereas
the values of f for the GRP are only slightly below those
the carbon composites, the variations in u and v with log Nf
are greater.
Values of f, u and v for the impact-damaged laminates are
listed in Table 6. An initially surprising feature of these
results is that for the CFRP laminates the observed values
of f are higher than those for the virgin laminates, and do not
at first sight seem to fit the pattern of the previously
suggested relationship with tensile strength that has
appeared to be applicable to all materials investigated.
The presence of impact damage also modifies the manner
in which f varies with log Nf, as shown in Fig. 8. For a 1 J
event, f falls with log Nf in a manner similar to that for the
undamaged laminate, although at a higher level. But the
effect of a 2 J impact in both the HTA/913 and HTA/982
composites is to cause a modest increase in f rather than a
decrease. By contrast, a 2 J impact event on the GRP lami-
nate results in a marked decrease in f (see Tables 5 and 6).
In general, u and v remain close to 2, unlike the f values,
and do not change markedly with life. Their mean values for
all CFRP materials, for example, are 2.15 and 2.38, respec-
tively, the similarity being indicative of the high level of
symmetry in the constant-life curves for all of the carbon
composites. The asymmetry of the curves for the GRP lami-
nate is reflected in the much higher values of u (see Table 5).
We have previously commented [11] that the value of the
f parameter appeared to be related in some way to the
strength of the laminate in question, but there was uncer-
tainty as to exactly what function of strength was the most
appropriate correlating factor. It seemed initially that f was
proportional to the tensile strength for CFRP laminates, but
as more materials were tested it appeared that a power-law
function may be more appropriate. However, the correlation
with tensile strength failed to fit results for impact-damaged
laminates and for the GRP material [20] and it appeared that
the use of a general relationship between f and some other

Table 6
Summary of values of constant-life fitting parameters and errors for CFRP and GRP laminates with prior impact damage (linked to Excel sheet)

Material Log life, f s.d. (f) u s.d. (u) v s.d. (v)

log cycles

HTA/982 3 2.63 0.24 2.17 0.11 2.00 0.09

1 J damage 4 2.38 0.09 2.14 0.04 1.98 0.04
5 2.10 0.21 2.09 0.12 1.93 0.10
6 2.03 0.29 2.14 0.17 2.08 0.15
HTA/982 3 2.56 0.00 1.92 0.00 1.73 0.00
2 J damage 4 2.56 0.08 1.98 0.03 1.80 0.03
5 2.63 0.17 2.06 0.07 1.89 0.06
6 2.78 0.19 2.18 0.07 1.99 0.77
HTA/913 3 2.53 0.57 2.10 0.26 1.81 0.21
2 J damage 4 2.53 0.54 2.21 0.25 1.88 0.20
5 2.60 0.61 2.36 0.28 1.97 0.22
6 2.77 0.97 2.55 0.42 2.11 0.33
E-glass/913 3 2.82 0.76 3.56 0.44 2.17 0.27
2 J damage 4 2.79 0.57 4.26 0.37 2.24 0.20
5 2.22 0.22 4.71 0.20 2.17 0.10
6 1.56 0.98 5.02 1.44 2.13 0.59
984 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987
Fig. 9. Relationship between f and c for all laminates, CFRP and GRP,
virgin and damaged. The f values are for a constant life of 10 5 cycles. The
best-fit line through the data represents the equation: log (f) ˆ 20.15
21.06 log (c).
material characteristic in the first stages of a life-prediction
procedure may have been feasible only for a particular class
of undamaged composites. However, a new examination of
the available data for the full range of our experimental
materials-CFRP and GRP, virgin and impact-damaged-has
led to a revised view, namely that the relationship is
between f and the strength ratio s c/s t, the parameter c in
the constant-life model of Eq. (1). All available data are
plotted in Fig. 9. The error bars in this graph are given by
the standard deviations returned by the Origin LM non-
linear least-squares fitting routine for f and the conventional
combined error for the ratio s c/s t obtained from experimen-
tal measurements of strength. It can be seen that there is a
reasonable linear fit on the log–log scale suggesting an
inverse power-law relationship, viz.
f ˆ Ac2p ; …3†
the result being independent of the material type and
damage state. The two constants, A and p are functions of
life, the (negative) slope of the line shown in Fig. 9
Fig. 10. Variation of the constant-life f parameter with log life through the
equation f ˆ Ac2p , where A and p are both functions of log Nf.
increasing with increasing log Nf. The dependence of the
two constants on log Nf is shown in Fig. 10.
4.4. Life prediction
Some of the results that we have discussed have an impor-
tant bearing on the use of the constant-life model for life
prediction. We have previously illustrated the use of the
model described earlier to predict s /log Nf curves for a
laminate from a knowledge of only the tension and
compression strengths of the material and a small number
of fatigue-test results, provided background knowledge of
the behaviour of other CFRP materials was available [10].
To make such predictions, we used a constant value of the
parameter f, believing at the time that this was more or less
invariant with life and was a linear function of the laminate
tensile strength. By retaining a constant fixed value of f, the
observed variations with log life of the values of u and v
obtained by the fitting process were somewhat more marked
than when all three parameters were freely fitted, and the
observed linear functions of u and v with life were used in
predicting the s /log Nf curves. Having obtained and
analyzed data for more materials, virgin and damaged, a
revised procedure now suggests itself.
First, the monotonic tension and compression strengths of
the material under investigation are determined to provide
the value of the parameter c. The relationship between f and
c encapsulated in Eq. (3), together with the empirical varia-
tion of the parameters A and p with log life, is then used in
Eq. (2a). As the variation of f with life is more marked than
is the case with u and v, it is then reasonable to remove the
variation of these two parameters with life from Eqs. (2a)
and (2b). For CFRP composites, for example, it is possible
to use the average values given in Table 5, viz. 2.15 and
2.38, and assume them to be independent of log Nf. The
small effects of this assumption on the resultant values of f
can be seen from Table 7. Life predictions by means of
Mathcad, as described earlier, can then be carried out. Initial
inputs to the Mathcad worksheet for a given material, even
one for which no fatigue data are available, are only the
tensile and compression strengths. On the basis of Eqs.
(2a), (2b) and (3), and the assumed constant values of u
and v of 2.15 and 2.38, a preliminary set of stress/median-
life curves can then be predicted. As experimental fatigue
data are gradually collected at two or three R ratios, the
initial assumptions relating to the functional relationships
(i.e. for u, v and f) can be refined and the necessary statistical
data obtained in order to predict curves for quantiles other
than 50%. Although the procedure can clearly be extended
to include life prediction for impact-damaged samples of
CFRP laminates, further experiments on GRP laminates
are required to verify the behaviour of these materials before
the life-prediction procedure can be considered to be
completely general. It is clearly necessary to validate the
model for use with other lay-ups and composite types,
 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987 985

Table 7
A comparison of the effect of curve-fitting the constant-life data for two of the experimental CFRP materials with fixed values of the parameters u and v

Material Log life, Free fitting; f, u and v Fixed u and v

log cycles
f s.d. (f) u s.d. (u) v s.d. (v) f s.d. (f) u v

T800/924 4 1.43 0.13 2.14 0.19 2.25 0.17 1.41 0.02 2.15 2.38
6 1.24 0.34 2.65 0.62 2.78 0.54 0.96 0.03 2.15 2.38
HTA/982 4 1.01 0.09 2.05 0.22 2.40 0.25 1.03 0.03 2.15 2.38
6 0.71 0.03 1.85 0.09 2.34 0.11 0.77 0.03 2.15 2.38

including laminates with woven-fibre reinforcement, and a
wider range of impact energies also needs to be studied.
Finally, we note that if the reduction in compression
strength following an impact event can be satisfactorily
predicted by a model of the kind proposed by Soutis and
Curtis [12] or Papanicolaou and Stavropoulos [37], for
example, then the likely effects of impact damage on the
fatigue response of a ‘new’ laminate could be reasonably
well predicted even before any impact and fatigue-after-
impact experiments had been carried out [20].
4.5. Design parameters
The constant-life model could be more attractive to the
Fig. 11. Variation of the three fatigue design parameters, amax, (u 1 v)/2,
and u/v, with life for two CFRP and one GRP laminate of [(^45,02)2]S
construction.
designer if three alternative, physically more meaningful,
characteristics were used instead of the parameters f, u
andv. For example, the maximum alternating stress allow-
able at any given fatigue life, i.e. the peak alternating stress,
or the ridge of the envelope shown in Fig. 6, could be used.
This maximum is readily obtained by differentiating Eq. (1)
with respect to the mean component of stress, m. The
normalised mean stress for this condition is:
…uc 2 v†
mˆ2 ; …4†
…u 1 v†
resulting in an explicit expression for the peak alternating
stress:
 …u1v†
u v 11c
amax ˆ fu v : …5†
u1v
Two other characteristics may now be defined from the
original parameters to describe the curve:
1. The mean of u and v, or (u1v)/2, describes the narrow-
ness of the ‘bell’ of the bell-shaped constant-life curve,
and could be referred to as a fatigue sensitivity. Thus, if
(u1v)/2 is large the value of alternating stress decreases
rapidly as the mean stress moves away from the optimum
position, whereas if (u1v)/2 is small the material is more
robust, with alternating stress reducing only slowly as the
mean stress moves away from the optimum position.
2. The ratio u/v represents the tensile bias or asymmetry of
the curve with respect the mean ordinate between the
tensile and compressive limits, in itself a mark of bias
in the fatigue behaviour. For u ˆ v the curve is
symmetric. The peak alternating stress is located at m ˆ
(1 2 c)/2 and has a value of f[(1 1 c)/2] 2u. For u/v , 1,
the material behaves better with tensile mean stress and
poor with compressive mean stress, and vice versa.
An illustration of the differences in the variations of these
three parameters with life for three of the experimental
laminates is shown in Fig. 11. The relatively small differ-
ences between the two CFRP laminates and the much
greater difference between these and the GRP composite
are clearly shown by these plots. The final illustration in
this article, Fig. 12, presents a wider comparison, on a
more sensitive scale, of the variation of the parameter
amax with life for all undamaged laminates used in this
study. It is clearly seen in this figure that of the six
986 M.H. Beheshty et al. / Composites: Part A 30 (1999) 971–987
Fig. 12. Variation of the fatigue design parameter amax with life for a range
of composite laminates of [(^45,02)2]S lay-up.
[(^45,02)2]S composites, the four materials showing the
best performance are the HTA/913, T800/924, HTA/982
and IM7/977. The fatigue responses of these four appear
to be indistinguishable, despite the fact that two of them
contain higher-performance fibres than the other two. The
poorest fatigue response, as might have been predicted, is
that of the GRP laminate. And perhaps the most surprising
aspect of the results in this figure is the fact that the curve for
the T800/5245 laminate falls closer to that for the glass/
epoxy composite than to the group of other CFRP materials.
We note that these differences could not necessarily have
been foretold simply on the basis of known characteristics
of the fibres: it is clear that the relative performances of
these materials must be determined by some combination
of fibre, matrix, and probably also interfacial characteristics
rather than any one of these alone.
5. Conclusions
1. The validity of an empirical fatigue life-prediction model
developed in the course of previous work on a range of
carbon-fibre reinforced plastics has been extended to
include other materials and material conditions.
2. The model is a constant-life model which is able to
describe the stress/life/R-ratio failure surface of a given
laminate in terms of the monotonic tensile and compres-
sion strengths of the material and three empirical para-
meters, referred to as f, u and v. It is found that for a given
class of materials (e.g. CFRP of given lay-up) the values
of u and v are close to 2 and do not vary greatly with life
or material characteristics. The parameter f, moreover, is
a function of the ratio of the compression and tensile
strengths, and varies with life.
3. The model appears to be valid for glass-reinforced plas-
tics as well as for the carbon-fibre composites for which
it was originally developed.
4. The effect of low-velocity impact on the fatigue response
of both CFRP and GRP laminates has been studied. In
CFRP the impact damage leads to a higher proportion of
premature failures at short lives, extending the log Nf
distribution downwards and increasing the spread. In
GRP, however, the opposite effects occur.
5. The changes in fatigue response that occur as a result of
the impact damage can be incorporated in the model
from a knowledge of only the monotonic strengths of
the damaged laminate. Thus, the fatigue response of a
damaged laminate can be predicted if these properties are
known, without the need, at least in the first instance, for
experimental fatigue data.
6. A variety of methods of obtaining the parameters of the
Weibull distributions of pooled fatigue-life data for
virgin and undamaged laminates has been explored.
MLEs appear to give consistent results. Other methods
can also be used with confidence, although the linear
least-squares method seems to be less well suited to
this purpose on account of the strong influence of
short-life data which may be suspect.
7. The value of the Weibull shape parameter, l , is about 1.3
for most of the CFRP laminates tested. Small observed
differences in l do not appear to correlate with materials
characteristics. The mean observed value of l for the
GRP laminates is somewhat higher than that for the
CFRP, i.e. the fatigue response of the GRP appears to
show less variability, although the reason for this differ-
ence is not apparent.
8. An alternative set of fatigue design parameters derived
from the constant-life model are proposed.
Acknowledgements
M.H. Beheshty would like to acknowledge the financial
support of the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education of
Iran during his period of study at the University of Bath. The
work described in this article builds substantially on a series
of research programmes on the fatigue behaviour of fibre
composites carried out at Bath with funding from the DERA
(Farnborough). Contributions have been made to this work
by many more people than those listed as authors, and we
are very happy to record those of our colleagues H Reiter
and N Gathercole at Bath, and those of Professors G Dorey
and P.T. Curtis and Mr M.J. Hiley at the former Royal
Aircraft Establishment. We are also please to acknowledge
valuable help from the Department of Mechanical Engineer-
ing at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and
Medicine, London, in allowing us the use of a servo-hydrau-
lic testing machine during the later stages of this work.
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