Experimental Research and Analysis on Fatigue Life of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) Tendons

Abstract

The fatigue life of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) tendons was studied in this paper. A new wedge-type anchorage system was applied to the fatigue test of CFRP tendons and demonstrated an excellent fatigue resistance. In the test and analytical data, the fatigue stress ranged from 200 MPa to 800 MPa, and maximum stresses from 0.37 to 1.0 fu (fu = ultimate tensile strength of CFRP tendons) were determined. The main work and results were that the stress range and stress level (maximum stress) were two key parameters affecting the fatigue life of CFRP tendons. A bilinear equation and a linear equation considering the fatigue life of CFRP tendons jointly affected by the stress range and the maximum stress were established. The error of predicted results and test results was 0.038 and 0.083, respectively, both representing good prediction accuracy. The predicted results of Whitney's method showed that, at a 95% confidence level, when the stress range was 200 MPa, 400 MPa, and 600 MPa, the maximum stress limit of CFRP tendons, which were not broken in a fatigue test of 2 million times, was 63.9% fu, 53.0% fu, and 36.8% fu, respectively.