Multicycle fatigue resistance of brittle polymers

Conclusion A model of multicycle fatigue of polymers based on the hypothesis of self-simulation of the failure process was proposed and a method of predicting the durability was elaborated in the present study. It was found that in low-temperature conditions of self-heating, the crack is the basic cause of fatigue failure. A cyclic durability equation was obtained in the form of a modified time summation criterion for the stressed state in the failure zone in the vicinity of the apex of a fatigue crack. It was shown that in the case of brittle failure in multicycle fatigue, the maximum principal stresses which arise in the failure zone, one order of magnitude smaller than the size of the fatigue crack, are the criterion of failure.Translated from Mekhanika Kompozitnykh Materialov, No. 4, pp. 633–638, July–August, 1990.