Modelling the fatigue behaviour of composites honeycomb materials (aluminium/aramide fibre core) using four-point bending tests

Composite Sandwich Materials are being increasingly used in high-performance structural applications because of their high stiffness and low weight characteristics. Presently, the long-term performance of such structures, especially under fatigue loading, is not enough studied. The aim of this paper is to address such fatigue behaviour by using a fatigue model verified by experimentation. The fatigue model is based on the fatigue modulus concept (degradation of stiffness) which is proposed for core-dominated behaviour and for two directions cells (L and W). Two non-linear cumulative damage models (L and W) derived from the chosen stiffness degradation equation, are examined in context with the linear Miner's damage summation and compared with available experimental results. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.