A Study on Fatigue Strength of CFRP Laminate Compo-site in Air/Artificial Sea Water

Abstract

Recently, Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) composite material has been applied to large-scale structures such as large scale wind turbine blade and large pressure vessel not only aircraft structure. In addition, when considering the application of the CFRP composites also to large-scale structures in sea water it is needed to investigate the influence of sea water absorption characteristics of the CFRP composites on the strength properties.
In this study, we conducted tensile strength tests and fatigue strength tests in conditions of air atmosphere and sea water atmosphere by using specimens with a circular hole made of CFRP laminate composite plate and we have investigated the following strength properties of CFRP laminate composite, that is, (1) the influence of artificial sea water absorption on the tensile strength, (2) the fatigue strength in air and in artificial sea water at room temperature.
From these test results, we have obtained the basic data of CFRP laminate composite to be utilized to various large-scale structures.