The understanding of fatigue damage mechanisms of short fiber reinforced thermoplastics are a key issue in order to optimize material processing and propose physically based multiscale fatigue damage models. The presented work aims at a fine description of 3D damage development as observed by synchrotron X-ray microtomography. Damage processes at the micro and mesoscale are fully described in order to extract the elementary damage mechanisms, their sequence and kinetics. The effects of local fiber configuration and orientation are particularly detailed. From observations it is clearly evidenced that cavitation plays a major role in the fatigue damage process as it triggers all elementary damage mechanisms observed at the microscale. It is also shown that a characteristic length appears in the fatigue damage development. This internal length is in the order of magnitude of the spherulite size, suggesting a strong impact of the spherulite size on the fatigue damage development. Finally the effect of local fiber orientation on the micro and meso crack orientation is presented.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.