JOURNAL OF

COMPOSITE
M AT E R I A L S

Article

Study on static and fatigue behaviors of

carbon fiber bundle and the statistical
distribution by experiments

Journal of Composite Materials

2015, Vol. 49(25) 31573168
! The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0021998314560385
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Jian Song, Weidong Wen, Haitao Cui and Sibo Zhao

Abstract
In this paper, the static, tensiontension fatigue, and residual strength behaviors of carbon fiber bundle have been
investigated using experimental methods. The corresponding mechanical models and statistical distribution regulations
have also been established based on the experimental data. The test results indicate that the test section length of fiber
bundle had a marked effect on the static strength, which decreased with the increase of length. A two-parameter Weibull
distributional function was used to describe the distribution of static strength. Furthermore, the S-N curve was obtained
by a new segmented function to reflect the changing of fatigue life against stress levels. The experimental results of
residual strength show that there was an abnormal tendency, which increased first and decreased later as the increase of
cyclic number, for the residual strength of carbon fiber bundle in both tested stress levels 87% and 80%, respectively.
Therefore, a new model for the residual strength was put forward and the good agreement between the fitting curves
and experimental was obtained.

Keywords
Carbon fiber bundle, static strength test and distribution law, fatigue life test and S-N, fatigue life distribution, residual
strength test and mechanical model

Introduction
Carbon ber reinforced composites have been widely
used as reinforcement in polymer composites, owing to
their good mechanical properties and light weight. Most
of the early works focus on the certainty performance,1
such as the stiness, strength, and fatigue characteristic
of composites, which causes that composites are often
overdesigned, such as heavier and more costly than
necessary. Therefore, probability design methods have
been gradually conducted into composites research.
Scha and Davidson2 proposed a strength-based wearout model to predict the fatigue life and residual strength
of composite laminates and the related distributions
were investigated by a two parameter Weibull function.
Cheng and Hwu3 investigated the fatigue reliability of
composite laminates subjected to constant amplitude
loading and a residual analysis model was proposed to
predict the residual strength. Whitworth46 studied the
statistical distribution laws on graphite/epoxy composites based on a set of static and fatigue tests and put
forward to p-E-N and p-S-N models. Yang et al.79

proposed a three-parameter fatigue and residual

strength degradation model to predict the statistical fatigue behavior of angle-ply composites. Wu and Yao10
derived the fatigue life distribution of composite laminates based on their static strength distribution.
Although carbon ber reinforced composites has
been studied in many aspects, the research on the performance of carbon ber bundle as main component is
quite limited. There are still some issues associated with
that left to be solved in the respects of non-uniform quality of laments, length of limited ber bundle and fatigue
characteristic, all of which have an impact on the static
and fatigue performance to some extent. Moreover, it is
inevitable to consider the statistical distribution
owing to the random question of self-defect and
College of Energy and Power Engineering, Nanjing University of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, China
Corresponding author:
Jian Song, College of Energy and Power Engineering, Nanjing University of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, No. 29 Street, Nanjing 210016, China.
Email: dfsongjian2006@126.com

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Journal of Composite Materials 49(25)

processing error. Phani11 put forward a new modied

Weibull distribution function used to analyze the
strength of single ber. Yu et al.12 studied the relationships between the tensile curves of ber bundles and
single bers and then proposed an approach to predict
the stressstrain curve of single bers based on ber bundles. Joe et al.13 showed that two-parameter Weibull
distribution could be used to describe the tensile strength
of bers at a xed length and some experimental
research for cellulose bers were performed. Yuan
et al.14 studied the static strength distribution laws of
single bers and a theory of random crack cores was
presented to predict the strength of composites. Zhu
et al.15 carried out research on the fatigue characteristic
of carbon ber bundles, which had experienced 1800 C
heat treatment in nitrogen atmosphere.
The purpose of this work is to investigate the static
strength, fatigue behavior and residual strength of
carbon ber bundle based on experiments. Meanwhile,
as there is a large scatter in the carbon ber bundles, it is
meaningful to investigate the static strength and fatigue
life of ber bundles adopting the theory of probability
and statistics. According to the experimental research,
the relationship between static strength and experimental length (dened as characteristic length) is rstly
obtained and a two-parameter Weibull distribution
function is then assumed to describe the distributional
regular of ber bundles static strength, in which the two
parameters are obtained by tting the experimental
data. Additionally, a segmented function is proposed
to describe the carbon ber bundles S-N curve and
the distribution function has also been obtained based
on test results. Finally, the residual strength is studied
by experiment and a new model is applied to describe
variation of the residual strength.

Experimental
T300/3K was used as experimental materials. General
characteristics of this type of carbon ber bundles were

available form manufacturer: linear nominal density is

198 g/1000 m; number of laments in the single bundle
3000.Three types of specimens with various lengths
(L 30 mm, 40 mm, and 50 mm) were prepared for
static strength test and only one type of specimens
with characteristic length 50 mm were tested in fatigue
and residual strength experiments. All of specimens were
tted with aluminum end tabs (length: 50 mm, width:
12.5 mm) by gluing bundle ends in between at pieces
of aluminum (Ergo 9190 two-component epoxy resin
was applied as glue). Schematic and actual representative specimens were shown in Figure 1(a).
The static strength tests of ber bundles were performed according to the ASTM D3379-75 standard.16
Due to the lack of associated fatigue testing standard
for carbon ber bundle, the tensiontension (T-T) fatigue tests for carbon ber bundle were done according
to the ASTM E606 standard.17
The T-T fatigue tests were subjected to a constant
amplitude load with stress ratio of 0.1 and frequency of
15 Hz. Meanwhile, fatigue tests were terminated at one
million cycles. The Instron8874 machine (Figure 1(b))
was applied to perform the static and fatigue tests.
Once the fatigue life under dierent stress levels was
obtained, the corresponding residual strength tests
can be measured. The specimens were rstly fatigued
at a maximum stress level up to 1/3 or 2/3 corresponding fatigue life, and then the residual strengths were
measured.

Results and discussion

Static strength tests
Testing results of static strength. In order to investigate the
static strength calculated by equation (1) and statistics
distribution of carbon ber bundles, a set of 19 specimens with dierent characteristic lengths (7 specimens
with 50 mm length, 6 specimens with 40 mm, and 8 specimens with 30 mm length) has been generated and the

Figure 1. Schematic (a) and actual (b) photographs of specimens.

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Song et al.

3159

corresponding results are presented in Table 1, which

are also the residual strengths R(0) in the condition of
zero cycle.
U

4P
d2  3000

where P is the peak of static load; d is the nominal

diameter of carbon ber bundle in which d is equal
to 7 mm.
From Table 1, we can see that the static strength of
ber bundles was increased with the decrease of characteristic lengths, which indicated a size eect on the static
strength of ber bundles. In addition, the representative
loaddisplacement curves for dierent characteristic
lengths and the curve of inuence of characteristic
length on average strength tted by the model 2 were
shown in Figure 2, respectively. It is clearly found that
an obvious non-linear phenomenon happened as the
increase of load and also the average static strengths of
ber bundle with dierent lengths were remarkable
reduced with the increase of characteristic length.
 0 1=m
c
0
S
L

where S0 is the average strength, L is the characteristic

length (30, 40, and 50 mm), c and m are the constants
determined by experimental data (m 1.632,
c0 3,625,272.57).
Damaged photographs subjected static loading are
given in Figure 3. From this gure, the location in
the surface of ber bundles appears as the amount
of uness phenomena, which indicates that there
exists a certain quantity of monolament taking
place failure gradually so that a de-bunching failure
mode nally happens in the middle of carbon ber
bundle.
Statistical distribution of static strength. To research the
statistics distribution of ber bundles, the two-parameter Weibull distribution function (3) is used to t
the static strengths R(0) and thus we can plot the
related probability paper and distribution of static
strength in Figure 4.
  !
X
FX PfU  Xg 1  exp 


Table 1. Static strength test results of carbon fiber bundles.

Characteristic
length

Specimen
number

Peak
load (N)

Strength
(MPa)

Average
strength (MPa)

50 mm

L50-1
L50-2
L50-3
L50-4
L50-5
L50-6
L50-7

112.84
103.35
104.05
113.21
106.95
110.79
113.81

977.32
895.17
901.23
980.57
926.31
959.57
985.73

946.50

964.83

23.99

40 mm

L40-1
L40-2
L40-3
L40-4
L40-5
L40-6

127.84
123.43
122.02
129.51
129.64
128.00

1107.29
1069.05
1056.91
1121.73
1122.84
1108.71

1097.75

1111.23

37.61

30 mm

L30-1
L30-2
L30-3
L30-4
L30-5
L30-6
L30-7
L30-8

130.72
131.74
132.65
133.48
134.92
137.84
140.68
141.15

1132.25
1141.09
1148.91
1156.11
1168.58
1193.86
1218.47
1222.56

1172.73

1188.73

34.75

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Scale
parameter, 

Shape
parameter, 

3160
(a)

Journal of Composite Materials 49(25)

(b)

160
140

L30-1 : L=30mm
L40-3 : L=40mm
L50-4 : L=50mm

1300

Average strength/MPa

120

Load/N

100
80
60
40

Fitting curve by Eq.(2)

Experimental data

1200

1100

1000

900

20
0
0.0

1400

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

displacement/%

1.0

1.2

1.4

800
25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

Fiber length/mm

Figure 2. (a) Loaddisplacement curve of typical fiber bundle with different characteristic lengths; (b) influence of characteristic
length on average strength.

Figure 3. Static tensile test of carbon fiber bundle: (a) pre-test; (b) during the test; (c) photograph of failure specimen.

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Song et al.

3161

where F(X) represents the statistical distribution of

carbon ber bundles;  U means the static strength; 
and  are scale parameter and shape parameter,
respectively.
From Figure 4, several important ndings about the
static strength statistical distribution of carbon ber
bundles were given as follows: First of all, it is logical
to consider that the statistical distribution for ber
bundle strength can be estimated by using a twoparameter Weibull distribution function (3) according
to the correlation coecients (R 0.903, 0.884, and
0.865 for L 50, 40, and 30 mm, respectively) in
Figure 4(a) to (c). Furthermore, although the strength
of ber bundles varies with dierent characteristic
length, the value of shape parameters has a no signicant change (refer to Figure 4(d)) and the general
change trend is that with the increase of length, the
curve slope of Weibll distribution function in view of
one type of length decreases gradually.

(a)

In addition, the KolmogorovSmirnov hypothesis

tests were applied to verify quantitatively whether the
proposed two-parameter Weibull distribution function
is suitable for the statistical distribution of carbon ber
bundles. The hypothesis test results are listed in Table 2
and the method is introduced briey in Appendix 1.
According to Table 2, the values for all of the test
statistics (sqrt(n)*D) are outside the reject domain,
therefore, it is reasonable to accept the hypothesis
that the statistical distribution for static strength of
ber bundles follows the Weibull distribution law.

Fatigue life test

Testing results of fatigue life. A set of 22 specimens subjected to nine various constant amplitude stress levels
are listed in Table 3. The S-N curve of carbon ber
bundles referred to equations (4) to (6) was then plotted
in Figure 5 and the related parameters tted by the

(b)

7.04

6.90
7.03

L50: Experimental data

L50: Fitting curving

6.88

7.02
7.01

lnX

lnX

6.86

6.84

6.82

Equation
y=a+b
Adj. R-Squ 0.90297

6.80

6.78

L40: Experimental data

L40: Fitting curving

B
B

-2.0

-1.5

-1.0

Intercep
Slope

-0.5

7.00
6.99
6.98

Value Standard Er
6.871
0.00551
0.041
0.00553

0.0

0.5

Equation
y=a+b
Adj. R-Squa 0.88385

6.97
6.96

1.0

-2.0

-1.5

-1.0

ln[-ln(1-F(X))]
(c)

(d)
L30: Experimental data
L30: Fitting curving

Failure probability

7.08

lnX

7.07
7.06
7.05
7.04
Equation

y=a+b

Adj. R-Squa 0.86457

Value

7.02
7.01
-2.5

-2.0

-1.5

-1.0

Standard Err

Intercept 7.0806

0.00437

Slope

0.0287

0.00426

0.0

0.5

-0.5

ln[-ln(1-F(X))]

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.0

0.8

7.09

7.03

-0.5

ln[-ln(1-F(X))]

7.11
7.10

Value Standard Err

Intercept 7.0132
0.00409
Slope
0.0265
0.00426

D
D

1.0

0.6

0.4

L30:Fitting curving
L40:Fitting curving
L50:Fitting curving
L30: Experimental data
L40: Experimental data
L50: Experimental data

0.2

0.0

800

900

1000

1100

1200

1300

1400

Static strength/MPa

Figure 4. Weibull distribution probability paper of static strength (a)(c) and failure probability of carbon fiber bundles with different
characteristic lengths (d).

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Journal of Composite Materials 49(25)

Table 2. Hypothesis test results for static strength distribution

function.
Characteristic lengths

L 30 mm

L 40 mm

L 50 mm

Number of specimens
Kolmogorov D
sqrt(n)*D
Reject domain at
significant level 0.05

8
0.2388
0.6755
[1.36,1)

6
0.2974
0.7285

7
0.2438
0.6450

D supjFn(x)  F(x)j, where F(x) and Fn(x) are the assumed distributional
function and distributional function of samples, respectively; sqrt(n)*D
represents test statistics.

Table 3. Tensiontension fatigue test results of carbon fiber

bundles.
Stress
level
94% U

Specimen
number

Fatigue
life, Nf

lgNf

 0:94
1. 0:85  max
U
max
0:0506l g Nf 1:059
U

185
243
291

2.267
2.386
2.464

2.372

92% U

4
5
6

629
500
450

2.799
2.699
2.653

2.721

87% U

7
8
9
10

6984
7949
5923
6550

3.844
3.900
3.773
3.816

3.836

85% U

11
12

10,881
12,363

4.037
4.092

4.064

80% U

13
14
15
16

14,544
20,883
15,869
19,486

4.163
4.320
4.201
4.290

4.248

75%

17
18
19

235,079
239,358
274,297

5.371
5.379
5.438

5.397

73%
70%
60%

20
21
22

>1e6
>1e6
>1e6



max
lg Nf  4:014 0:182
1  0:310
lg Nf  1:469
U
3.

>6
>6
>6

fatigue test data was directly given in equations (4)

to (6).
From the experimental results in Figure 5(a) (open
triangle 4), it is concluded that the normalized stress
basically underwent a linear trend between 0.85 and
0.94, while there was an obvious decay trend in the

 0:85
2. 0:75  max
U

Average lgNf

1
2
3

>6
>6
>6

range of 0.73 to 0.85. When the normalized stress was

less than 0.73, all of the fatigue life of ber bundles was
more than 1e6, which was dened as the innite life.
Therefore, it can be used a linear function to describe
the variation trend between 0.85 and 0.94 and an exponential model to describe the change regularity of
0.730.85, respectively. The determined relationships
between fatigue life and normalized stress were
expressed in the following equations

max
U

 0:75
lg Nf 4 6

From Figure 5(a), it is clearly found that good coincidence between experiment and theory was obtained
for the fatigue issue of carbon ber bundles. Moreover,
failure photograph under the fatigue load was shown in
Figure 5(b) and it can be seen that the failure model
mainly manifested de-bunching failure, which was similar with the mode as that in static strength.
Nevertheless, the dierence was that the failure regions
were concentrated in the middle of specimens compared
to that in the static tests.
Statistical distribution of fatigue life. Furthermore, in order
to investigate the distribution law for the fatigue of
ber bundles, we assume that the statistical distribution
of the fatigue life also follows a two-parameter Weibull
distribution with reference to composite laminates3,6,18
 l !


n
Fn P Nf  n 1  exp 


where F(n) denotes the fatigue life distribution of

carbon ber bundles, N is the fatigue life,  and l are
the scale and shape parameter, respectively both of
which can be calculated by the same method as the
static strength.
The calculated results are presented in Table 4 and
corresponding distributional curves are plotted in
Figure 6. As for these results, the statistical distribution

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Song et al.

3163
(a) 1.0

(b)

max/ult

0.9

0.8

0.7

0.6
2

lgNf

Figure 5. (a) The curve of fiber bundles normalized stress against lgNf; (b) fatigue test specimen of carbon fiber bundle.

Table 4. Parameters in Weibull distributional function of fatigue

life.
Weibull distribution
parameters

87%
stress level

80%
stress level

G
l

7263.01
6.96

19,100.89
5.11

of fatigue life was tted by the two-parameter Weibull

distribution fairly well, as shown in Figure 6(c).
According to the statistical results mentioned above,
the excellent correlation implies that adoption of
Weibull distributional function in carbon ber bundle
fatigue analysis is feasible. In addition, there was a
more discreteness in low stress level, which was also
reasonable because the lower stress level causes that
the fatigue damage takes place in more local positions
in the surface of ber bundles and the propagation
paths are also more complex.
In addition, the similar approach as the static
strength was used to investigate whether the hypothesis
distribution regulation was reasonable for the fatigue
life of carbon ber bundle at various stress levels. The
quantitative results are given in Table 5. It is clearly
seen that all the values of D were less than 1.36,
which was the lower limit of reject domain. Thus, the
hypothesis can be accepted.

Testing results for residual strength of carbon

fiber bundles
Testing results of residual strength. Fourteen specimens
were fatigued at two maximum stress levels 87% and

80%, respectively, up to 1/3 and 2/3 corresponding

average fatigue life, which were 7852 for 87% stress
level and 17696 for 80%. Their residual strength tests
were then performed and the results are listed in
Table 6. The failure photograph related to residual
strength tests is shown in Figure 7(a).
From Table 7, it is obviously found that the residual
strengths had a non-monotonic tendency with the
increase of cycle, which is similar to the notched
strength of woven composites.19,20 Figure 7(a) exhibits
several serious failure models with de-bunching and
fracture damages in the middle of ber bundles. The
possible reason for the phenomenon could be that the
monolaments in the ber bundle are gradually dispersed under the fatigue load, which may lead to
more uniform bearing in each of monolaments.
Therefore, a higher load and further serious damage
are shown in the following static tensile test.
Meanwhile, a briefness bang sound could be listened
when the fracture occurred.
Furthermore, in order to investigate the dierence
between static and residual strength, Figure 7(b) presents the loaddisplacement curves for three representative specimens used in static strength and residual
strength tests, respectively. It is found that the value
of residual strength experienced an increase rstly,
and then showed a decreased trend against cycle
number. The reasons of this abnormal phenomenon
may be that on the one hand, the stress state for each
of monolaments is more uniform as mentioned above,
which could lead to the more bearing capacity for single
ber bundle. On the other hand, the extent of accumulative damage in monolaments may increase subjected
cyclic loading, which could cause the decrease of the
mechanical performance to some degree. Therefore,

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Journal of Composite Materials 49(25)

(a)

(b)

10.00

9.00

Stress leve : 87%

Fitting curve

9.95

Ult

8.90

9.85

8.85

9.80

8.80
8.75

Equation
Adj. R-Squar

8.65

B
B

-1.5

-1.0

Intercept
Slope

-0.5

Ult

9.75
9.70

y = a + b*
0.95498
Value

8.70

Stress leve : 80%

Fitting curve

9.90

lnX

lnX

8.95

8.89055
0.14367

0.0

Standard Erro
0.01531
0.01787

y = a + b*

Adj. R-Squar 0.91796

Value

9.60
9.55

0.5

Equation

9.65

-1.5

-1.0

ln[-ln(1-F(X))]

Standard Err

Intercept 9.8574

0.02849

Slope

0.03326

-0.5

0.0

0.1955

0.5

ln[-ln(1-F(X))]

(c) 1.0

Failure probablity

0.8

0.6

0.4

Distribution function with max=80%U

0.2

Experimental data with max=80%U

Distribution function with max=87%U
Experimental data with max=87%U

0.0

4000

8000

12000

16000

20000

24000

Fatigue cycle Nf

Figure 6. Weibull distribution probability paper of fatigue life (a), (b) and failure probability (c).

Table 5. Hypothesis test results for fatigue life distribution

function.

Table 6. Residual strength tests results of carbon fiber bundles.

Stress levels

87%

80%

Number of specimens
Kolmogorov D
sqrt(n)*D
Reject domain at
significant level 0.05

4
0.2465
0.4931
[1.36,1)

4
0.2696
0.5392

Stress
levels
87%

Terminal
number
1/3Nf*

2/3Nf*

the variation in residual strength versus cyclic number

may be the result of interaction of both factors
mentioned.
In order to describe the phenomenon quantitatively,
a new model was proposed. It is assumed that
dRn
gS, r f n
dn

80%

1/3Nf**

2/3Nf**

Peak
load (N)

Strength
(MPa)

Average
strength (MPa)

169.41
150.69
158.58
163.86
155.26
156.59
153.66
152.12

1467.30
1305.19
1373.58
1419.28
1344.81
1356.34
1330.93
1317.57

1391.34

153.36
152.45
156.19
110.35
136.94
128.64

1328.33
1320.43
1352.82
955.81
1186.06
1114.23

1333.86

1337.41

1085.37

Nf* and Nf** means the fatigue life of 87% and 80% stress levels,
respectively.

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Song et al.

3165
(a)

(b)

180

Residual strength at 1/3Nf

Residual strength at 2/3Nf
Ultimate strength

150

Load/N

120

90

60

30

0
0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

displacement/%

Figure 7. Residual strength failure photograph of carbon fiber bundle.

Indicating that R(n) (the rate of residual strength at

the nth stress cycles) is equal to the product of the
eect, g(S, r), of the stress range, S, of the stress ratio,
r and the eect, f(n), of the number of cycle. The stress
range S is dened as the dierence between the maximum and minimum cycle stress. So, the simplest
approximation to the functional form of g(S, r) and
f(n) is expressed as
gS k1 Sb , S 1  rmax , k1 4 0
f n Qn v, Q 4 0, v 4 0

where k1, b, Q, and v are constants. In equation (9), it is

assumed for simplicity that the stress ratio is xed so
that g(S, r) is a function of S alone and f(n) is the linear
function to ensure the variation of R(n) is in accordance
with the experimental data.
Substituting equation (9) into equation (8) and carrying out the integration from n1 to n2 cycles, we have
Rn2  Rn1 


k1 Sb Q  2
n2  n21 k1 vSb n2  n1
2
10

For n2 n, n1 0, equation (10) reduces to

Rn  R0 

k1 Sb Q 2
n k1 vSb n
2

11

Let a k1Q/2, c k1v, then

Rn R0  Sb an2  cn

12

Equation (12) is a theoretical residual model of

carbon ber bundle involving three parameters a, b,

Table 7. Parameters in residual strength model.

Parameters

Low stress
amplitudes (80% U)

High stress
amplitudes (87% U)

a
b
c

1.55e-3
0.532
10.016

3.86e-3
1.009
59.454

and c, which will be determined by amount of residual

strength tests in the following section.
Based on the data of residual strength tests, the parameters involved in equation (12) can be obtained. The
results for residual strength tests at high and low stress
amplitudes are shown in Table 7 and the related curves
are plotted in Figure 8. Additionally, the corresponding
residual strength under 87% and 80% stress levels for
1/3Nf and 2/3Nf cycles calculated by the equation (12)
are listed in Table 8. According to the results, the maximum error was only 8.14%, which took place under
80% stress levels for 2/3Nf, therefore, it is reasonable to
accept the theoretical formula (12) to predict the residual strength of ber bundle.
Furthermore, as equation (12) reects the relationship between the static strength and residual strength, it
is necessary to further validate whether the converted
static strengths R(0) calculated by equation (13) are
suitable to the statistical distribution of static strength.
Therefore, the residual strength data listed in Table 6
can be converted into the equivalent static strength
using the model given by equation (13). And the corresponding results are plotted in Figure 9 where the set
of converted equivalent static strength, R(0), using the
values of a, b, and c given in Table 7 was plotted as

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3166

Journal of Composite Materials 49(25)

(a)

(b)

1400

1400

1200

Residual strength R(n)

Residual strength R(n)

1200
1000
800
600

Residual strength curve obtained by Eq (12)

of 87% stress level
Average value of 87% stress level
Experimental data of 87% stress level

400
200

1000
800
600

Residual strength curve obtained by Eq (12)

of 80% stress level
Average value of 80% stress level
Experimental data of 80% stress level

400
200

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

4000

Cycle number n

8000

12000

16000

20000

Cycle number n

Figure 8. Residual strength curves of carbon fiber bundle at high stress level (a) and low stress level (b).

Table 8. Comparison between the predicted values of residual

strength based on equation (12) and test data.
Stress
levels

Terminal
number

Test
results

Predicted
results

Error

87%

1/3Nf*
2/3Nf*

1391.34
1337.41

1386.26
1345.20

0.37%
0.58%

80%

1/3Nf**
2/3Nf**

1333.86
1085.37

1245.92
1173.69

6.59%
8.14%

Nf* and Nf** means the fatigue life of 87% and 80% stress levels, respectively. All of the test data are from Table 6.

R0 Rn Sb an2  cn

13

where R(0) represents the converted equivalent

strength.
It can be observed from Figure 9 that the correlation
between the Weibull distribution obtained directly by
static strength and converted data from residual
strength was comparatively well despite of stress
levels. Thus, it is reasonable to describe the residual
strength at various stress levels by equation (12).

Conclusions

1.0

The performances of static strength, fatigue life, and

residual strength for carbon ber bundles of T300
bers have been tested and the corresponding mechanical models have also been built based on the testing
results. The following conclusions can be made:

0.9
0.8

Distribution function

solid squares and the solid curve was the same Weibull
distribution of the static strength presented in
Figure 4(d) with the 50 mm characteristic length.

0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
840

Convered ultimate strength using equation (13)

Weibull distribution obtained form equation (6)

860

880

900

920

940

960

980

1000

1020

1040

Convered ultimate strength

Figure 9. Theoretical prediction of static strength and residual

strength data converted to static strength for carbon fiber bundle
under both stress levels.

1. The inner original defects derived from manufacturing process existing in each of monolaments caused
that the static strength of ber bundle was correlated
with test section length. Therefore, the specimen
with a longer characteristic length has generally
lower strength under static tests.
2. Under T-T cyclic loading, the de-bunching phenomena are more obviously and mainly concentrated in
the middle of ber bundle, and less in the root part.
A segmented function was proposed to describe the
S-N curve of carbon ber bundles and the related
parameters were then obtained based on the fatigue

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Song et al.

3167

life data. In order to investigate the statistical distribution of fatigue life, a two-parameter Weibull distribution function was well used to describe the
distribution.
3. In the end, the residual strength tests were conducted
and a theoretical model was derived based on the
assumption that the residual strength of ber bundles is non-monotonic. Additionally, the failure
degree for residual strength tests was the most serious compared to others, which had not only obvious de-bunching damages, but also fracture
damages.

Funding
This work was supported by Jiangsu Innovation Program for
Graduate Education [grant number KYLX_0237].

Conflict of interest
None declared.

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Appendix
The KolmogorovSmirnov test.
This method21 proposed by Kolmogorov was
used to test quantitatively the dierence degree
between the assumed distributional function F(x)
and the distributional function of samples Fn(x)
(plotted in Figure 10). From the following

Figure 10. Schematic diagram of Dn.

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3168

Journal of Composite Materials 49(25)

equation, it is dened as a distance Dn to describe

the dierence


Dn supFn x  Fx

14

A reasonable test under a signicant level is that if

the hypothesis distribution is true, the value Dn mentioned above has a reduced trend, else the value
would be increased. Therefore, there exists a threshold value k, i.e. when sqrt(n)*Dn < k, the hypothesis
could be accepted, else be rejected, where sqrt(n) is
used to reect the eect of the number of test
specimens.

The limiting distribution of sqrt(n)*Dn was derived

by Kolmogorov as follows
p

lim P nDn  t Ft

n!1

Ft 1  2

1
X

2 2

1i1 e2i

15

i1

where F(t) was calculated and listed in the limiting distributional table of Dn.
Finally, the rejection domain can be obtained by
checking out the limiting distributional table under a
given signicant levels , i.e. when  0.05, the reject
domain U [1.36, 1).

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