There is increasing interest in the use of organic matrix composite materials in aerospace, as it is commonly stated that composite materials show good fatigue properties. This is rather difficult to quantify. Fatigue testing to obtain a S/N curve or a Range-Mean diagram for a composite material is fraught with difficulties; test specimens are prone to significant manufacture variation and it is time consuming to get data for high fatigue life. It is recognized that microcracks exist in composite components that would normally be considered “undamaged”. It has also been found that such cracks show evidence of crack growth during fatigue testing, although such growth is tiny in the length scale of the component.
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