International audienceThis paper aims at studying fatigue damage behavior of injection molded 30 wt% short glass fiber reinforced polyamide-66 composite (PA66/GF30). The evolution of dynamic modulus, hysteresis area, cyclic creep and temperature during fatigue tests were analyzed and discussed. Damage analyses by X-ray micro-computed tomography (lCT) technique on interrupted fatigue tests at several percentages of total fatigue life were performed to further understand the damage mechanisms and evolution during fatigue loading. It can be observed that experimental results related to the evolution of dynamic modulus, strain, temperature and energy dissipation are important and consistently complement each other for damage evaluation of PA66/GF30. During fatigue loading, diffuse damage occurs over the entire specimen though the damage does not necessarily exhibit the same level between different locations inside the specimen. The lCT analysis of voids characteristics demonstrates that the damage continuously increases during fatigue loading. The damage is developed notably along fiber interface in the form of fiber/matrix interfacial debonding

a b s t r a c tAdvanced Sheet Molding Compound (A-SMC) is a serious composite material candidate for structural automotive parts. It has a thermoset matrix and consists of high weight content of glass fibers (50% in mass) compared to standard SMC with less than 30% weight fiber content. During crash events, structural parts are heavily exposed to high rates of loading and straining. This work is concerned with the development of an advanced experimental approach devoted to the micro and macroscopic characterization of A-SMC mechanical behavior under high-speed tension. High speed tensile tests are achieved using servo-hydraulic test equipment in order to get required high strain rates up to 100 s À1 . Local deformation is measured through a contactless technique using a high speed camera. Numerical computations have led to an optimal design of the specimen geometry and the experimental damping systems have been optimized in terms of thickness and material properties. These simulations were achieved using ABAQUS explicit finite element code. The developed experimental methodology is applied for two types of A-SMC: Randomly Oriented (RO) and Highly Oriented (HO) plates. In the case of HO samples, two tensile directions were chosen: HO-0 (parallel to the Mold Flow Direction (MFD)) and HO-90 (perpendicular to the MFD). High speed tensile tests results show that A-SMC behavior is strongly strain-rate dependent although the Young's modulus remains constant with increasing strain rate. In the case of HO-0 , the stress damage threshold is shown an increase of 63%, when the strain rate varies from quasi-static (0.001 s À1 ) to 100 s À1 . The experimental methodology was coupled to microscopic observations using SEM. Damage mechanisms investigation of HO and RO specimens showed a competition between two mechanisms: fiber-matrix interface debonding and pseudo-delamination between neighboring bundles of fibers. It is shown that pseudo-delamination cannot be neglected. In fact, this mechanism can greatly participate to energy absorption during crash. Moreover, the influence of fiber orientation and imposed velocity is studied. It is shown that high strain rate and oriented fiber in the tensile direction favor the pseudo-delamination.

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