Fatigue life modeling of self-healing polymer systems

Self-healing polymers are a class of materials that have the capability to repair damage to the polymer matrix autonomically. The amount of life extension during the fatigue loading of a self-healing polymer depends on the interaction between the chemical kinetics of the healing system and the damage kinetics of the fatigue loading. Two fatigue life models are presented, one phenomenological model that accurately estimates the fatigue life of the self-healing polymer system examined and one physically based fatigue model that incorporates the polymerization properties of the healing system to determine the expected fatigue life of self-healing polymer systems in general.