Low cycle fatigue of PPS polymer injection welds (I) -fatigue crack behavior

An important class of short-fiber reinforced composites is the sheet molding compound, which is recently developed and currently used in many engineering applications. Fatigue failure of the composites is a subject of major concern in design and cyclic crack propagation is of particular significance in the fatigue life prediction of short fiber composites. However, research on the fatigue behavior of polymer injection weld, especially short glass fiber-filled polymer injection weld, has not been carried out. In this study the analyses of the fatigue crack growth behaviors at weld line and in the bulk are performed based on low cycle fatigue test.