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.