In-situ fatigue life prognosis for composite laminates based on stiffness degradation

Abstract In this paper, a real-time composite fatigue life prognosis framework is proposed. The proposed methodology combines Bayesian inference, piezoelectric sensor measurements, and a mechanical stiffness degradation model for in-situ fatigue life prediction. First, the composites stiffness degradation is introduced to account for the composites fatigue damage accumulation under cyclic loadings and a new growth rate-based stiffness degradation model is developed. Following this, the general Bayesian updating-based fatigue life prediction method is discussed. Several sources of uncertainties and the developed stiffness degradation model are included in the prognosis framework. Next, an in-situ composites fatigue testing with piezoelectric sensors is designed and performed to collected sensor signal and the global stiffness data. Signal processing techniques are implemented to extract damage diagnosis features. The detected stiffness degradation is integrated in the Bayesian inference framework for the remaining useful life (RUL) prediction. Prognosis performance on experimental data is validated using prognostics metric. Finally, some conclusions and future work are drawn based on the proposed study.