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The fatigue life of carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic matrix composites is of great interest for many engineering applications. This work evaluated the influence of poly(etherimide) (PEI) on the fatigue life of laminated thermoplastic composites reinforced with carbon fibers. The mechanical characterization of the carbon/PEI composites was performed by static loading (tensile test) and cyclic fatigue. Tensile strength obtained was used to calculate 5 stress levels for cyclic fatigue testing with R = 0.1 and 12 Hz for 85, 80, 70, 60, and 55%, being this last stress level found as the infinite life. These stress levels allowed plotting a well-described SN curve. Seeking to understand the fracture behavior of carbon/PEI composites, a fractographic study by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was performed. SEM micrographs confirm the good quality of carbon/PEI laminate with good adhesion between fibers and matrix and also confirmed the nature of fatigue life showing in-plane fracture for high loads and explosive fracture for lower loads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of thermoplastic composite materials in aerospace and naval fields has increased due principally to their high performance associated with low specific weight. In order to screen material behavior, the effects of external environments on the mechanical properties during usage must be clearly understood. Environmental factors such as ultraviolet radiation (UV), corrosive fluids, moisture and temperature can limit the applications of composites by deteriorating the mechanical properties over a period of time. In order to characterize composite materials, are commonly used tensile tests. Another test that can be used in order to evaluate the viscoelastic properties of thermoplastic composite materials is free vibration damping. In this work, the viscoelastic properties of polyamide 6.6/carbon fiber laminates were obtained by two types of tests: tensile and free vibration damping tests. Two families of textile polyamide/carbon fiber composites ([±45] and [0/90]) were obtained by hot compression molding. The present studies have been performed to explore relations between the dynamic mechanical properties and the influence of high moisture concentration of this thermoplastic laminate. The results show that the E' decrease with the increase in the exposed time for polyamide/carbon fiber composite specimens and that free vibration damping technique can be used instead of tensile test in order to know the elastic modulus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the experimental characterization of the fatigue behavior of GLARE laminate taking into account the hygrothermal effects. The environmental factors can limit the applications of composites by deteriorating the mechanical properties during service. The importance of temperature at the time of conditioning plays an important role in environmental degradation of such composite materials. In this work, the experiments showed that the hygrothermal conditioning can induce significant changes in the material properties. Due to the effect of the hygrothermal aging, both the tensile and fatigue values of the studied systems have been reduced, that is, the absorbed moisture has deleterious effects on the physical properties of metal-fiber composite laminates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]