Fatigue of hybrid fibre-reinforced plastics.

Understanding the fatigue behaviour of hybrid fibre-reinforced plastics is desirable for exploiting their features in safe, durable and reliable industrial components. The fatigue performance of hybrid composites has not been extensively investigated yet. The paper presents an overview of the available knowledge on the fatigue of hybrid fibre-reinforced plastics, and, more specifically, reports the fatigue behaviour of a quasi-isotropic pseudo-ductile all-carbon fibre interlayer hybrid composite by experimental measurements and observations, with emphasis on the damage development. The fatigue conditions are tension-tension stress- and strain-controlled cyclic loading. The results include fatigue life for different maximum stress and strain levels, stiffness evolution and damage observations by X-ray micro-computed tomography. The studied hybrid all-carbon fibre quasi-isotropic composite exhibits pseudo-ductility in quasi-static testing. For stress-controlled fatigue, the fatigue load over the limit of elastic response is not sustained. Contrary to that, the composite retains its load-carrying ability in the pseudo-ductile regime for a strain-controlled regime, albeit with lowered stiffness. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ageing and durability of composite materials'.