Temperature Effects on Fatigue of Polymer Composites.pdf

Temperature Effects on Fatigue of Polymer Composites Hai C. Tang, Tinh Nguyen, Tze-jer Chuang, Joannie Chin, Felix Wu, and Jack Lesko* National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899 *Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061 Introduction The model has been verified with experimental fatigue data Fiber-reinforced polymeric composites(FRPC) have been from a glass fiber/vinyl ester composite in various extended from aerospace, automotive, and military environments: air, fresh water, and saltwater at 30°C. This applications into civil engineering structures[1,2]. There is an study investigates the effects of temperature on fatigue life of urgent need to assess the safety arid reliability of using a vinyl ester/E-glass fiber composite submerged in seawater. polymeric composites in these applications. One particularly critical issue in regards to using polymeric composites in structural applications is their fatigue reliability in different Experimental Procedure environmental and loading conditions. Fatigue damages in In this paper, we only briefly describe the experimental polymeric composites for noncivil engineering applications procedure to provide background information. For a complete have been extensively investigated. Studies of the effects of description, readers may refer to [3]. The specimens used in water and saltwater on fatigue behaviors of polymer these experiments are obtained from a vinyl ester/ E-glass composit