Experimental and numerical fatigue life study of cracked AL plates reinforced by glass/epoxy composite patches in different stress ratios

Abstract

In this study, the fatigue behavior of composite reinforced cracked aluminum 1050 plates is investigated experimentally and numerically. The tests are conducted in four different stress ratios between 0 and 1. At first step, plates with similar cracks and geometries have been prepared. Then the glass/epoxy patches have been attached to the cracked plates using Araldite 2015 adhesive. Fatigue load has been applied to three cases of samples including non-patch, one-side patch and two-side patch, where in all stress ratios the maximum force is considered constant. A three-dimensional finite element analysis is developed in ABAQUS. A good correlation between finite element results and the corresponding experimental data was observed. The results illustrated that two-side patch sample has the most fatigue strength. It is found that for two-side patch samples, fatigue life has been increased approximately 2000% and 4800% in the stress ratios R = 0 and 0.5, respectively in comparison with the non-patched samples.

Communicated by Krzysztof Kamil Żur.

Keywords:

• Cracked Al plate
• composite patch
• fatigue testing
• stress ratio
• finite element simulation