Short fibre reinforced thermoplastics are increasingly used in automotive applications because of their potential for light weight design and cost efficient manufacturing by injection moulding. The fibre orientation, tuneable in the production process, defines the degree of anisotropy which causes different damage behaviour depending on the multiaxial stress state.
Therefore, the multiaxial damage behaviour, based on micro cracking, is analysed by combining mechanical loading tests and non-destructive X-ray refractometry.
CFRP are more and more used in modern civil aircrafts hence the whole fuselage is made of this material (B787; A350). Due to strict certification Standards finally the normal in-service loading gives a low stress level compared to the static and even the fatigue strength of the material. Hence CFRP are assumed to have an infinite life. To evaluate this assumption, fatigue tests on CFRP-specimens were performed up to 108 load cycles. The first inter-fiber failure was evaluated non-destructively by the fatigue tests accompanying X-ray-refraction topography altemately and in-situ mechanical loading. The basic idea of the investigation is represented in fig. 1. At low load levels it could not be assumed the total failure of the samples. Hence accompanying non-destructive testing (NDT) is mandatory to get information about the damage state of the material.