Fatigue and thermal failure of polymeric composites subjected to cyclic loading

In the presented study the experimental results for the investigation of fatigue of polymeric composites subjected to intensive cyclic loading with presence of the self-heating effect were presented. Experiments were carried out on laboratory stand, which provides the synchronous measurement of loading force, displacements and temperature. It was observed, that the fatigue process during occurrence of the self-heating effect consists of three phases, which were analyzed and described. The characteristic self-heating temperature distributions and their evolution during the whole loading history were analyzed. The parametric analysis of influence of loading conditions on the self-heating temperature evolution and fatigue of polymeric composites was presented. Basing upon the measurement results the authors proposed empirical models, which give a qualitative evaluation of parametric dependencies.