A new fatigue failure theory for multidirectional fiber-reinforced composite laminates with arbitrary stacking sequence

•A fatigue failure theory for fiber-reinforced composite laminates is developed.•The theory predicts the fatigue life, residual strength and failure envelopes.•The theoretical results are in good agreement with available experimental data. Fatigue failure is one of the most important failure types of fiber-reinforced composites. In this paper, a new fatigue failure theory for multidirectional fiber-reinforced composite laminates with an arbitrary stacking sequence is developed, by combining nonlinear residual strength and residual stiffness models with the recently improved Puck’s failure theory which includes the in situ strength effect. This fatigue theory can predict the fatigue life, residual strength and residual failure envelope of fiber-reinforced composite laminates under multidirectional loadings. For these predictions it is necessary to recalculate the fatigue lives of laminae after each cycle since the stresses in the laminae change due to stiffness degradation. It is also necessary to account for the nonlinear accumulation of damage at the new stress level in the laminae resulting from stiffness degradation. This is achieved by using the concept of equivalent cycle. The theoretical predictions are in good agreement with available experimental results.