Towards a local approach to fatigue, for the calculation of structures, applied to continuous fibre reinforced composite materials and structures

2018

The original concept of mechanical fatigue was linked to the failure of structures and was treated at first within the framework of Fracture Mechanics. Models developed to explain this phenomenon must therefore be able to be applied to structures: changing the structure means changes to the model and its identification. It is therefore judicious to develop models capable of treating both the damage processes and also able to be used within a local framework: to this end a method based on Damage Mechanics seems appropriate. This approach has long been employed and requires only the identification of damage processes at the level of the RVE (Representative Volume Element) to be used for any s…