Abstract
Continuous carbon fiber reinforced epoxy resin laminates were exposed to a tension-tension fatigue loading (R-ratio R = 0.1). Simultaneously, cylindrical metallic pins with flat, polished front surfaces were pressed with an apparent contact pressure between 10 and 23 MPa onto two opposite sides of the specimen. This paper studies the mechanisms of damage development of carbon fiber reinforced laminates under such a fretting fatigue situation and proposes a quantitative measure for the degree of fretting damage. Fatigue life of the composite could drastically be reduced by an additional fretting component, if load bearing 0¿̐ư layers were damaged by fretting. Fretting fatigue damage was found to penetrate proportionally with time into the bulk material; any action of notch effects was not found. However, cracking and delamination of fiber layers pre-damaged by fretting can cause synergistic interaction between fretting and fatigue loading. The influence of the loading conditions is investigated.