Challenges für the experimental investigation of VHCF of polymer composites

Kurzfassung

Testing in the Very High Cycle Fatigue (VHCF) regime for polymer composites faces new challenges. Though composites are sometimes compared to metals they are totally differ-ent with respect to microstructure and fatigue behaviour. Thereby the experiences from VHCF test with metal specimen can not easily be transferred to composites. So there is a strong need to develop new and specialised test environments and test methods for com-posite materials. For doing so it is needed to understand the known fatigue behaviour of composites and the challenges arising from it. This paper gives a short overview of the known mechanisms in fatigue of composites and explains the resulting challenges. Two concepts for testing composites in the VHCF regime are presented taking the challenges into account that arise from the properties of polymer composites