Numerical and experimental investigations on fatigue behavior of carbon/epoxy laminates toughened by nanofibers

Composite laminates are advanced engineering materials which are widely used in various industries due to their unique properties. The aim of this paper is to assess the effect of electrospun nanofibers on the fracture and fatigue behavior of composite laminates and also to investigate the performance of Finite Element Method (FEM) based on Cohesive Zone Model (CZM), in predicting the fatigue behavior of the laminates. For this purpose, standard specimens were fabricated from carbon/epoxy Prepregs interleaved with nylon 6,6 nanofibers. The specimens were then subjected to mode I static and fatigue loading conditions. The results showed that fracture toughness was doubled by adding nanofibers between composite layers. Under fatigue loading, the crack growth rate of the nanomodified specimens was less than the virgin specimens. So that, crack growth rate decreased 8 times by interleaving the nanofibers in . The CZM method was used to evaluate the efficiency of finite element in modeling the fatigue crack growth rate in virgin and nanomodified specimens. The progressive failure model was used to simulate the fatigue behavior. Consistency of FE results with the experimental results showed that the CZM method is a suitable tool to model the fatigue behavior of interleaved composite laminates.