S-N Curve Characterisation for Composite Materials and Prediction of Remaining Fatigue Life Using Damage Function

S-N curve characterisation and prediction of remaining fatigue life are studied using polyethylene terephthalate glycol-modified (PETG). A new simple method for finding a data point at the lowest number of cycles for the Kim and Zhang S-N curve model is proposed to avoid the arbitrary choice of loading rate for tensile testing. It was demonstrated that the arbitrary choice of loading rate may likely lead to an erroneous characterisation for the prediction of the remaining fatigue life. The previously proposed theoretical method for predicting the remaining fatigue life of composite materials involving the damage function was verified at a stress ratio of 0.4 for the first time. Both high to low and low to high loadings were conducted for predicting the remaining fatigue lives and a good agreement between predictions and experimental results was found. Fatigue damage consisting of cracks and whitening is described.