Testing Procedure for Fatigue Characterization of Steel-CFRP Hybrid Laminate Considering Material Dependent Self-Heating

Combining carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) with steel offers the potential of utilizing the desired characteristics of both materials, such as specific strength/stiffness and fatigue strength of fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) and impact resistance of metals. Since in such hybrid laminates multiple material layers are combined, a gradual failure is likely that can lead to changes in mechanical properties. A failure of the metal partner leads to an increase in stress on the FRP, which under fatigue load results in increased self-heating of the FRP. Therefore, a suitable testing procedure is required and developed in this study, to enable a reproducible characterization of the mechanical properties under fatigue load. The resulting testing procedure, containing multiple frequency tests as well as load increase and constant amplitude tests, enabled characterization of the fatigue performance while never exceeding a testing induced change in temperature of 4 K. In addition to the development of the testing procedure, an insight into the manufacturing induced residual stresses occurring in such hybrid laminates, which impacts the load-bearing capacity, was established using finite element simulation. The gathered data and knowledge represents a basis for future in-depth investigations in the area of residual stress influence on the performance of hybrid laminates and highlights its importance, since not only the used testing procedure determines the measured fatigue performance.