Comparison of composite damage growth tools for fatigue behavior of notched composite laminates

This paper provides overall comparisons of the fatigue results of an Air Force Research Laboratory exploration into the state of the art of existing technology in composite progressive damage analysis. This program performed blind and recalibration benchmarking exercises for nine different composite progressive damage analysis codes using unnotched and open-hole composite coupons under both static and fatigue loading. This paper summarizes the results of the fatigue portion of this program in which seven of the codes were evaluated. Comparisons are made herein for all seven participants' predictions with the test data. Overall percent error data are presented, as well as a long list of observations and lessons learned during this year-long effort.