Fatigue behaviour of carbon

fibre-reinforced aluminium
laminates
C. T. LI N* P. W. KAO* and F.S. YANG t
(* National Sun Yat-Sen University/t China Steel Corporation, Taiwan)
A new hybr i d composi t e (CARALL), consi st i ng of t hi n l ayers of carbon f i br e/
epoxy prepreg sandwi ched bet ween al umi ni um sheets, has been devel oped.
It is shown t hat t hi s class of mat er i al s of f ers hi gher modul us, hi gher t ensi l e
st r engt h and l ower densi t y t han 2024-T3 al l oy in t he l ongi t udi nal di rect i on.
Under t ensi on- t ensi on f at i gue l oadi ng, t he hybr i d l ami nat es showed
super i or f at i gue crack pr opagat i on resi stance in t he l ongi t udi nal di rect i on,
whi ch may be at t r i but ed t o t he br i dgi ng effect i mposed by t he i nt act f i bres in
t he crack wake. It has al so been shown t hat t he ef f ect i veness of f at i gue crack
gr owt h r educt i on i ncreases wi t h t he t hi ckness of t he carbon f i br e/ epoxy
l ayer. The resi stance t o f at i gue crack pr opagat i on can be f ur t her i mpr oved by
i nt r oduci ng compr essi ve resi dual stresses in t he al umi ni um l ayer by post-
cure st r et chi ng t he l ami nat e in t he pl ast i c regi on of t he al umi ni um al l oy.
Key words: composi te materi al s; fatigue testing; crack propagati on resis-
tance; fibre bri dgi ng; compressi ve residual stress; carbon fi bre-rei nforced
al umi ni um laminates
The advantages offered by advanced composite materi-
als over conventional alloys for weight-critical struc-
tural applications requiring high strength and stiffness
are widely recognized. Currently, traditional advanced
composites which are laminated using only one t ype of
prepreg material for the entire structure find extensive
applications in the aerospace and aircraft industries. In
addition to high strength and stiffness combi ned with
low density, advanced composites such as carbon
fibre-reinforced resin-matrix composites have good
dimensional stability, corrosion resistance and good
fatigue properties. However , resin-matrix composites
employing thermosetting polymers generally exhibit
brittle behaviour. This, in turn, reduces the fracture
toughness and damage tolerance of composite struc-
tures laminated exclusively with these prepreg materi-
als.
To circumvent the probl ems associated with traditional
resin-matrix composites, hybrid composites consisting
of two or more material types at the prepreg level are
currently being introduced to the market. One of the
emerging hybrid composites is ARALL laminate which
was originally devel oped by Vogelesang and associates
at Del ft University and is currently market ed by the
Al umi num Company of America. ARALL laminates
consist of alternating layers of thin aluminium alloy
sheets bonded by a structural adhesive impregnated
with high-strength unidirectional aramid fibres. It was
primarily devel oped as a material with good damage
tolerance properties. Recent investigations 1-6 have
shown that ARALL laminates possess superior fatigue
crack growth resistance to conventional high-strength
aluminium alloys. These properties, t oget her with high
tensile strength along the fibre direction and low
density, make ARALL laminates attractive for aircraft
structural applications where fatigue is an important
design criterion. Advantages of ARALL laminates over
conventional monolithic aluminium alloys have been
summarized by Bucci et al. s,6
In ARALL laminates, fatigue cracks propagate in the
aluminium layers when t ensi on-t ensi on fatigue loading
is applied. The fibres in the wake of the fatigue crack
remain intact, and the delamination develops bet ween
the aramid/epoxy and aluminium layers. Due to this
delamination, the intact fibres bridge over the fatigue
crack and restrain its opening. As a consequence, the
stress intensity factor, and hence the fatigue crack
growth rate of the aluminium layers, is considerably
reduced 2,3,7. The effectiveness of the crack growth
reduction depends on bot h the number of fibres in the
crack wake and the effective length of these fibres 7.
The effective fibre length is determined by the delami-
nation shape, i.e., the distance over which the intact
fibres bridge the crack.
The performance of epoxy-resin matrix composites
0010-4361/91/020135-07 (~) 1991 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd
COMPOSITES. VOLUME 22. NUMBER 2. MARCH 1991 135
depends strongly on the t ype of reinforcing fibres; each
t ype has its advantages and limitations 8. The advan-
tages of Kevlar/epoxy composites are good specific
strength and specific modulus due to the low fibre
density, as well as high impact resistance. However, the
poor compressive strength of Kevlar composites is a
maj or limitation. Compared with Kevlar/epoxy,
carbon/epoxy composites possess higher specific
modulus, but relatively low values of specific strength,
strain to failure and i mpact resistance. In terms of
fatigue, it was recognized 9 that Kevlar fibre composites
have bet t er low cycle fatigue performance but worse
high cycle fatigue performance than carbon fibre
composites. The concept of hybrid composites is a
natural extension of the composite principle of combin-
ing materials to optimize their value to the engineer. In
view of the different characteristics of Kevlar/epoxy
and carbon/epoxy composites, it is t herefore of interest
to study the behavi our of laminates similar to ARALL by
replacing aramid by carbon fibres. In the present work,
tensile and fatigue properties of laminates consisting of
carbon/epoxy prepregs sandwiched bet ween two
2024-T3 aluminium alloy sheets were studied. The
carbon rei nforced aluminium laminates will be named
as CARALL in the following text.
EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
Materials
The materials used in this work include:
1) 2024-T3 aluminium sheets of 1 mm thickness;
2) Torayca T-300 unidirectional prepreg P3E01-12
with 37% resin content supplied by Toray Industries
Inc; and
3) epoxy resin glass-cloth prepreg GFE #213 supplied
by Wah-Hong Chemical Co. The resin content is
34% and the warp-to-fiU ratio is 50:29.
Because of the thermal expansion mismatch bet ween
the aluminium alloy sheets and the carbon/epoxy layer,
thermal residual stress is expected to develop after
cooling down from the cure temperature. Glass-cloth/
epoxy prepreg was placed bet ween aluminium alloy
sheet and carbon/epoxy layer to reduce the thermal
residual stress.
Fabrication of CARALL laminates
To optimize the adhesion bet ween aluminium alloy and
epoxy resin, various pret reat ment s for the aluminium
surface have been evaluated 1. Based on the previous
study 1, a 1 min phosphating treatment followed by a
30 s Palene-62 sealing was selected for the fabrication
of CARALL laminates in this study. Surface treated
2024-T3 aluminium alloy sheets, carbon/epoxy prepreg
sheets and glass/epoxy prepreg sheets were stacked
according to the sequence shown in Fig. 1, in which
carbon fibres were aligned along the rolling direction of
the aluminium alloy. The number of carbon/epoxy
prepreg sheets was systematically varied from 0 to 6. A
designation CX will be used to represent different
CARALL laminates, where X is the number of carbon/
epoxy prepreg sheets in the laminate. The laminates
were cured in a programmable hot-press with two step
sheet
~/epoxy
re/epoxy
~/epoxy
sheet
Fi g. 1 A s c h e ma t i c i l l u s t r a t i o n o f CARALL l a mi n a t e s
curing, 140C for 2 h and 150C for 0.5 h, and 0.69 MPa
pressure.
Mechanical tests
Tensile test coupons, 100 mm long and 12.7 mm wide,
wi t h both ends protected by glass/epoxy tabs were
used. Tensile tests were carried out at room tempera-
ture on an Instron 1125 universal testing machine with
a cross-head speed of 0.5 mm min -1.
Single-edge notched (SEN) specimens, 200 mm long and
30 mm wide with the 2 mm deep notch machined by use
of a diamond saw, were used for fatigue crack propaga-
tion tests. All the SEN specimens were machined with
the long axis parallel to the fibre axis. Before the
fatigue test, the specimen surface was polished sequen-
tially with #1000 sand paper, #1200 sand paper, 1 Ixm
diamond paste, and 0.25 ~tm diamond paste in order to
facilitate observation of the fatigue crack. The fatigue
crack propagation tests were performed on an Instron
1332 servohydraulic machine. Fatigue tests were
carried out using load-control mode and a constant load
amplitude with load ratio R = 0.1 and a frequency of 10
Hz. The fatigue crack was observed using a travelling
optical microscope with 0.001 mm resolution.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Tensile properties
A typical tensile stress/strain curve of CARALL lami-
1200T]-- p Carbon fibre/epoxy
l O 0 O f
, o o l / .............
Q.
v
g
==
g
g
I l l
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5
Engineering strain (%)
Fi g. 2 Te n s i l e s t r es s / s t r ai n c ur v es o f CARALL l a mi n a t e (C6),
2024- T3 a l l o y , ca r b a n f i b r e / e p o x y co m p o s i t e a n d g l ass f i b r e/
e p o x y c o mp o s i t e
2.0
136 COMPOSI TES. MARCH 1991
T a b l e 1. T h e me c h a n i c a l p r o p e r t i e s f o r a l u m i n i u m a l l oy , c a r b o n f i b r e / e p o x y , gl ass f i b r e / e p o x y , CARAL L
l a mi n a t e s a n d A R A L L l a mi n a t e s
Tensile elastic 0.2 % Yi el d Ul t i mat e tensi l e Tensile total Densi ty
modul us (GPa) strength (MPa) strength (MPa) strain t o (g cm -3)
fai l ure (%)
2024-T3al l oy
L(0 ) 72.2 369 489
T(90 ) 72.1 323 474
12.2 2.77
Carbon f i br e/ epoxy
234.8 - 1104 0.5 1.55
Glass f i br e/ epoxy
20.8 166 291 2.0 1.92
CARALL
l ami nates
C0
C2
L ( 0 o ) C4
C6
CO
C2
T(90 ) C4
C6
70.0 350 412 11.8 2.68
77.0 394 506 1.4 2.53
85.1 445 637 1.4 2.45
91.1 497 766 1.4 2.35
71.4 304 393 12.4 2.68
63.5 294 347 10.1 2.53
59.5 280 304 10.2 2.45
57.1 267 291 9.4 2.35
2024
ARALL-2 L(0)
l ami nat es* 2024
T(90 )
64 359 717 2.5
49 228 317 12.7
2.29
* Dat a f r o m Ref er enc e 5
hates along with the curves of each individual constitu-
ent are shown in Fig. 2. The tensile properties of
CARALL laminates are given in Table 1, in which CO
designates laminates of aluminium alloy sheets bonded
by two layers of glass-cloth/epoxy prepreg sheet
without the carbon/epoxy layer. It is noticed that
CARALL laminates show higher tensile strength and
modulus and lower density than 2024-T3 aluminium
alloy.
Ther mal r esi dual stress
Because of the large difference in thermal expansion
coefficients among the constituents of CARALL lami-
nates, thermal residual stresses may exist in the:lami-
nates after cooling down from the curing temperature.
As a first approximation, the average residual stress in
the aluminium layers could be estimated by assuming
that both the rule of mixtures and Hooke' s law can be
applied. The contribution of the glass/epoxy layer can
be ignored due to its relatively low stiffness. Since
aluminium alloy is the only constituent in the laminates
showing the yielding phenomenon as indicated in Fig.
2, the deviation from linearity in the stress/strain curve
o f CARALL laminates must be due to yielding of the
aluminium alloy. A residual stress existing in alumin-
ium layers may shift the strain at which yielding occurs,
consequently a similar shift in the yielding strain of the
CARALL laminate will result. Hence, the average
residual stress in the aluminium alloy layer can be
estimated from the tensile stress/strain curves of
C A R A L L laminates according to Equation (1):
( S y A - SrA)/E A -~"S/ E ( l )
where SrA is the average residual stress in the alumin-
ium layer, S. A is the elastic limit of the aluminium
alloy, Sy is t~e elastic limit of the CARALL laminate, E A
represents Young's modulus of the aluminium alloy,
and E represents Young's modulus of the CARALL
laminate.
Based upon the above principle, the residual stresses
were determined using the method presented in a
previous report w. The uncertainty of the average
residual stress in the aluminium layer determined by
this method was determined to be within + 7 MPa. The
estimated average residual stress in the aluminium
layer of the as-cured CARALL laminate is shown in
Fig. 3 as a function of the thickness of the carbon/epoxy
layer. There exists a tensile residual stress in the
aluminium layer whose magnitude increases with the
thickness of the carbon/epoxy layer. This may be
COMPOSITES. MARCH 1991 137
100 10 - 4
"6
o.
8O
6 o i
4
2(2
I I t I i i I I t I i I
0 0 0 1 0 2 0 5 0 4 0 5 0 6 0 7 0 8
Thickness of car bon/ epoxy l ayer (mm)
Fig. 3 The t her mal resi dual stress in t he al umi ni um al l oy l ayer
of as-cured CARALL l ami nat es as a f unct i on of carbon/ epoxy l ayer
thickness
attributed to the increase in stiffness with increasing
carbon/epoxy thickness. Conversely, a compressive
residual stress must be present in the carbon/epoxy
layer of CARALL laminates, which may provide an
explanation for the improved tensile failure strain of
CARALL laminates over that of the pure carbon/epoxy
composite (Table 1).
Fatigue crack growt h rates
Fig. 4 shows the results of the fatigue crack growth
rates of 2024-T3 aluminium alloy and CARALL lami-
nates in the as-cured condition. It may be observed that
CARALL laminates possess improved fatigue crack
propagation resistance about two orders of magnitude
better than 2024-T3 aluminium alloy. To eliminate the
thermal residual stress, post-cure stretching for differ-
ent amounts of plastic deformation as indicated in Fig.
5 was applied to each CARALL laminate. Fig. 5 shows
the fatigue crack growth behaviour of CARALL lami-
nates with negligible residual stress. It is indicated that
fatigue crack growth rates for both C4 and C6 lami-
nates are nearly independent of crack length, while the
E
1 0 - 4
1 0 - 5
10-6
o 2 0 2 4 - T 5 al l oy
CO ( a s - c u r e d )
[ ] C2 ( a s - c u r e d )
C4 ( a s - c u r e d ) o
o
0
A C 6 ( a s - c u r e d ) o o o
O o
0
, o , : o 7 . . . . . . .
. . r , , , " " == " r '
[] [ ] l i b & && & ~
10-8 I ~ i ~ l l A D T A l tit All A A A A I l l l
10-9 I I ~ I i I i
O 5 10 15
Cr ock l engt h, a (ram)
F i g . 4 F a t i g u e c r a c k g r o w t h r a t e s ( / k o = 4 6 M P a ) o f a s - c u r e d
CARALL l a m i n a t e s
2 0
10-,5
~. 10 .6
E
10 . 7
i o - e
o 2 0 2 4 - T 3 al l oy
C2 ( p o s t - s t r e t c h i n g 0. 11%)
D C 4 ( post - st r et chi ng 0. 125%)
C6 ( p o s t - s t r e t c h i n g 0 . 1 3 %)
O
o
o
o
O
0
0
o o 0
o o o
0 0 0 6 0
[ ] o, ,
q l r " IF I i mm mmmm
10- 9 i I i I i I i
5 10 15
Crock l engt h, a (mm)
Fig. 5 Fatigue crack gr owt h rates ( Ao = 46 MPa) of CARALL
l ami nat es (C2, C4, C6) whi ch wer e stretched t o el i mi nat e t he
t her mal resi dual stress. The pl asti c def or mat i on used in t he
post-cure stretchi ng of each l ami nat e is i ndi cated in t he f i gure
5 2
2 0
E
Z
(3
O
2 4
8 -
0
103
EP,--- 2 0 2 4 - T 3 al l oy
~ C4 ( a s - c u r e d )
o - - - - C4 ( p o s t - s t r e t c h i n g 0 . 2 5 5 % )
J
J
i i i i i i , l l I i i i i i l l l i i t I I I l l l I I I I l l i l
104 105 106 107
Fat i gue cycl e
F i g . 6 I m p r o v e m e n t i n f a t i g u e c r a c k p r o p a g a t i o n r e s i s t a n c e o f
CARALL l ami nat e by use of post-cure stretchi ng. Both 2024-T3
al l oy and C4 (as-cured) l ami nat e wer e t est ed wi t h a stress
ampl i t ude of 46 MPa, and C4 (post-stretchi ng 0.235%) l ami nat e
was tested wi t h a stress ampl i t ude of 76 MPa
C6 laminate even shows a slight decrease in fatigue
crack growth rate as the crack length increases.
To explore the potential of CARALL laminates in
fatigue crack propagation resistance, a compressive
residual stress may be imposed on the aluminium layers
in CARALL by applying a permanent stretch to it. As an
example, a C4 laminate was stretched 0.235% prior to
the fatigue test, which would result in a compressive
residual stress of - 65 MPa in the aluminium layers.
The fatigue crack growth behaviour of the post-
stretched C4 laminate along with the results of the
2024-T3 aluminium alloy and the as-cured C4 laminate
are shown in Fig. 6. It is clear that post-cure stretching
may further improve the fatigue crack propagation
resistance of CARALL laminates.
Effect of di fferent stress ampl i tude and crack
l ength
It is expected that, similar to ARALL laminates,
138 COMP OS I T E S . MA RCH 1991
1 0 - 7
10-0
10 -s
Ao-=46MPa o
O
oO
o Ao-=70 MPa o
o
O
Q O 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
~o
I I I I I I I I I I I I i
10
Stress intensity range, AK (MPa m 1/2)
Fig. 7 The ef f ect of a p p l i e d s t r e s s ampl i t ude ( Aa) on t he
f a t i g u e c r a c k gr owt h rate of CARALL l ami nat e (C4)
0 O 0
i i i i
lO0
CARALL fatigue specimens with different crack lengths
should exhibit different fatigue crack growth rates at
the same A K value, because the constraint resulting
from the intact fibres bridging over the fatigue crack
may vary with crack length. Compared with a shorter
crack, more constraint on the crack opening may be
expected for a longer crack due to the greater number
of fibres in the wake of the crack, and consequently a
greater reduction in fatigue crack growth rate is
expected. Fig. 7 shows the effect of stress amplitude
(Ao) on fatigue crack growth rates of CARALL laminate
(C4), in which the AK values were calculated by
simply assuming that the crack is a through-thickness
crack and the laminate is homogeneous and isotropic.
The finite size correction factor, Y, for the SEN speci-
men 11 was used for AK calculation, where AK =
Y A ova-, and a is the crack length. It may be observed
that lower crack growth rates are obtained in the test
with the smaller applied stress amplitude, since a
greater crack length must be associated with a smaller
applied stress amplitude in order to give the same A K
value. Hence, it is clear that AK obtained by this
oversimplified calculation may not be an appropriate
way to represent the stress state at the tip of the fatigue
crack in this class of materials. According to Ritchie et
al. 3, the 'crack driving force' should be better repre-
sented by an effective stress-intensity range, A K~f,
which embodies the effect of both crack bridging and
closure. The effective stress-intensity range, A Kef f,
cannot be determined simply from the knowledge of
specimen geometry and loading condition. Therefore,
it is quite difficult to compare the fatigue crack propa-
gation obtained with different specimens and/or
loading conditions.
Effect of fibre bridging
The effectiveness of the crack growth reduction
depends on the number of intact fibres in the crack
wake and the effective length of these fibres, which is
determined by the delamination shape 7. After
removing the aluminium layers from fatigue-tested
CARALL specimens by chemical etching, a delamination
zone around the fatigue crack was observed whereas
I
,o _ ,! d
s=5.67 mm
s=2 mm ~ Wake removal by saw-cut
1 0 - e " I ~ ' ~ ' ~ ~ ~ / I I I I ,
2 4 6 8 10 12
Crack length, o (mm)
Fig. 8 The ef f ect of crack-wake r emoval on t he f at i gue crack
gr owt h rate of CARALL l ami nat e (C6), in whi ch a f at i gue t est w a s
i nt er r upt ed and ~3. 67 mm wake was r emoved bef or e r esumi ng
t he t est
. . . . : ~ : L
Fig. 9 Opt i cal mi cr ogr aph of a t ypi cal del ami nat i on zone in
f at i gue- t est ed CARALL l ami nat es
the carbon/epoxy and glass/epoxy layers were virtually
intact. To investigate the fibre bridging effect, a
wake-removal experiment was employed. In the
experiment, a fatigue crack propagation test was
interrupted, and, after a certain length of crack wake
was removed by use of a saw-cut, the test was resumed.
The results of a wake-removal experiment are shown in
Fig. 8, in which 's' is a through-thickness saw-cut with
COMPOSI T ES. MARCH 1991 139
Fig. 10 Op t i c a l m i c r o g r a p h o f t h e d e l a m i n a t i o n z o n e o f a
f a t i g u e - t e s t e d s p e c i m e n w h i c h s h o w e d a n u n u s u a l l y h i g h c r a c k
g r o w t h r a t e
all fibres severed, 'a' is the total crack length in the
aluminium layer, and ' a- s ' is the effective fibre bridging
length. It is clearly shown that the crack growth rate
increased by about an order of magnitude after --3.67
mm wake was removed.
A typical shape of delamination in fatigue-tested
specimens is shown in Fig. 9. The delamination has a
triangular shape with linear boundaries for cracks
longer than ~3 mm, while considerably larger delami-
nation near the initial notch might result from the
higher applied stress for crack initiation as well as a
smaller fibre bridging force. On the other hand, an
elliptical shaped delamination as shown in Fig. 10 was
observed on a specimen which showed an unus-aily
high crack growth rate. The above observations
indicate that the greater the longitudinal length in the
delamination zone (i.e., the length of the intact fibres
in the wake of the fatigue crack in the aluminium
layer), the less effective are the fibres in reducing the
stress intensity at crack tip and slowing crack growth in
the aluminium layer. Macheret et al. ' have shown that
the fibre bridging mechanism in ARALL laminates is
more efficient for linear rather than elliptical delamina-
tion boundary shapes, hence the linear delamination
shapes result in lower fatigue crack growth rates.
Comparison with ARALL laminates
For comparative purposes, the tensile properties of
ARALL-2 laminate 5 are listed in Table 1. The ARALL
laminate is a five-layer composite with two 0.2 mm
thick unidirectional aramid fibre/epoxy layers sand-
wiched between three 0.3 mm thick 2024-T3 aluminium
alloy sheets. As indicated in Table 1, the CARALL
laminates have higher elastic modulus and yield
strength but lower total strain to failure than the
ARALL-2 laminate. It is also shown that the density of
the CARALL laminates is 9-15 % lower than 2024-T3,
while that of the ARALL laminate is 18% lower than
2024-T33. On the other hand, one should bear in mind
that the ARALL-2 laminate contains 69 vol% alumin-
ium, while the CARALL laminates contain 72-85 vol%
aluminium. Hence, a relatively lower material cost can
be expected for the CARALL laminates.
1 0 - e
10-7
.~ 10 -s
E
10_9
1 0 - 1 0
lO-ll
C2 (os-cured)
C6 (as-cured)
o ARALL-16
[] ARALL- 2 s
o
~ ~ o o ~ ** **
e o e e o o ~ u m ~ m u n m u amP
r l r l
~ P g
[]
[]
r i r r 1 1 T i T 1 r I r i I r i
1 0 1 0 0
Stress intensity range, AK (MPa m 1/2)
Fi g. 11 C o m p a r i s o n o f t h e f a t i g u e c r a c k p r o p a g a t i o n b e h a v i o u r
o f C A R A L L a s a f u n c t i o n o f / k K wi t h ARALL-1 e a n d A R A L L - 2 3
Because of the fibre-bridging effect, a direct compari-
son of the fatigue crack growth rates of this class of
material obtained by different experimental conditions
becomes very difficult. In order to gain a rough idea
about the relative performance of CARALL and ARALL
laminates in fatigue crack growth resistance, the data of
the CARALL laminates as well as those of ARALL-16 and
ARALL-23 are presented in Fig. 11. The ARALL-1
laminate is an ARALL laminate based on 7075-T6
aluminium alloy. The data for ARALL-16 were obtained
by the use of a centre-notched panel specimen with R =
0.1 and a frequency of 25 Hz, while those for ARALL-2 3
were measured by the use of a compact-tension
specimen with R = 0.1 and 50 Hz frequency. By
recognizing the difference in experimental conditions,
one can only conclude that both CARALL and ARALL
laminates possess comparable resistance to fatigue
crack propagation.
CONCL USIONS
The present work shows that carbon fibre-reinforced
aluminium laminates (CARALL) possess low density,
high tensile strength, high modulus, and excellent
fatigue crack propagation resistance. Our results may
be summarized as follows.
1) Both tensile strength and modulus in the longitudi-
nal direction increase with increasing thickness of
the carbon/epoxy layer in CARALL laminates.
However, the thermal residual stress in CARALL
laminates also increases with the thickness of the
carbon/epoxy layer.
2) Under tension-tension fatigue loading, CARALL
laminates display superior fatigue crack growth
resistance in the longitudinal (0 ) orientation, which
may be attributed to the bridging effect of intact
carbon fibres in the wake of the fatigue crack. The
fatigue crack growth rate of CARALL laminates is
about two orders of magnitude lower than that of
2024-T3 aluminium alloy. It was also shown that the
effectiveness of crack growth reduction increased
140 C O M P O S I T E S . M A R C H 1991
wi t h t he t hi cknes s o f c a r b o n f i br e / e poxy l a ye r i n
CARALL l ami nat es .
3) Co mp r e s s i v e r es i dual st r esses can be i n t r o d u c e d i n
t he a l u mi n i u m l ayer by pos t - c ur e s t r e t c hi ng t he
l a mi na t e in t he pl ast i c r e gi on o f t he a l u mi n i u m
al l oy. Th e r es ul t i ng c ompr e s s i ve r es i dual st r esses in
t he a l u mi n i u m l a ye r can f u r t h e r r e d u c e t he f at i gue
c r a c k g r o wt h r at e o f t he l ami nat e.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Th e a u t h o r s wo u l d l i ke t o t h a n k Pr of e s s or A. C. Su
( Na t i ona l Sun Ya t - Se n Uni ve r s i t y) f or us ef ul di scus-
si ons. Thi s r e s e a r c h was s u p p o r t e d by Chi na St eel
Co r p o r a t i o n .
REFERENCES
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A U THORS
C. T. Li n a nd P. W. Ka o ar e wi t h t he I ns t i t ut e o f Ma t e -
rials Sci ence a nd Engi ne e r i ng, Na t i ona l Sun Ya t - Se n
Uni ve r s i t y, Ka o h s i u n g , Ta i wa n, Re publ i c o f Chi na.
F. S. Ya n g is wi t h t he Ne w Mat er i al Re s e a r c h a nd
De v e l o p me n t De p a r t me n t , Ch i n a St eel Co r p o r a t i o n ,
Ka o h s i u n g , Ta i wa n, Re publ i c o f Chi na .
COMPOSITES. MARCH 1991 141