Probabilistic analysis for the fatigue life of carbon/epoxy laminates

The paper aims to develop a new model to predict the fatigue life and describe its variation in carbon/epoxy laminates based on the damage accumulation behavior. For these goals, the cumulative damage is defined as a function of the elastic modulus and the resulting damage accumulation behavior is used to derive the damage-cycle relationship. And then, the fatigue life prediction model is derived through combining this damage-cycle relationship with the stress-damage relationship obtained by the damage mechanics already established in the literatures. Finally, a probabilistic model is developed to describe the variation of fatigue life based on the probabilistic stress–strain and probabilistic damage accumulation behavior. These models well describe the fatigue life and its variation in the carbon/epoxy laminates.