Fatigue behavior of laminated composites with a circular hole under in-plane multiaxial loading

• An analytical method is presented for fatigue behavior of notched composites under in-plane multiaxial loading.
• The method is based on minimum strength model and fiber failure criterion.
• Results are presented for biaxial tension–tension and biaxial compression–compression loading.
• Analytical predictions are compared with the experimental results.

A modified fiber failure fatigue model is presented for characterizing the behavior of laminated composites with a central circular hole under in-plane multiaxial fatigue loading. The analytical model presented is based on minimum strength model and fiber failure criterion under static loading available in the literature. The analysis starts with the determination of location of a characteristic curve around the hole and the stress state along the characteristic curve under in-plane multiaxial fatigue loading. Number of cycles to failure and location of failure are determined under given fatigue loading condition. Based on ply-by-ply analysis, ultimate fatigue failure and the corresponding number of cycles are determined. Analytical predictions are compared with the experimental results for uniaxial and multiaxial fatigue loading cases. A good match is observed. Further, studies are carried out for different in-plane biaxial tension–tension and biaxial compression–compression loading cases.