Composite Structures 53 (2001) 65±71

www.elsevier.com/locate/compstruct

Fatigue life prediction of unidirectional glass ®ber/epoxy composite

laminae using neural networks
Y. Al-Assaf, H. El Kadi *
American University of Sharjah, P.O. Box 26666, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Abstract
Fatigue behavior of unidirectional glass ®ber/epoxy composite laminae under tension±tension and tension±compression loading
is predicted using arti®cial neural networks (ANN). Stress-life experimental data were obtained for ®ber orientation angles of 0°,
19°, 45°, 71° and 90°. These tests were performed under stress ratios of 0.5, 0 and )1. The feedforward network used, provided
accurate modeling between the input parameters (maximum stress, R-ratio, ®ber orientation angle) and the number of cycles to
failure. Although a small number of experimental data points were used for training the neural network, the results obtained are
comparable to other current fatigue life-prediction methods. Ó 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Fatigue behavior; Composite materials; Arti®cial neural networks

1. Introduction Awerbuch and Hahn [2] also performed some o€-axis

The problem of fatigue failure prediction for ®ber-
reinforced composites is of importance in design and
inspection of composite structures/components used in
the various engineering applications. In the absence of a
well-de®ned failure criterion that can be used to predict
fatigue failure, extensive tests must be carried out for
di€erent ®ber orientation angles and loading conditions.
The issue of fatigue life prediction of ®ber-reinforced
composite materials has been investigated from a num-
ber of viewpoints. Proposed methodologies have either
been based on damage modeling or based on some kind
of mathematical relationship. Some of the attempts to
investigate the fatigue of the ®ber-reinforced composite
laminae are outlined here.
Hashin and Rotem [1] have shown that the use of
fatigue functions based on simple static quadratic failure
relations can, in certain instances, yield reasonable cor-
relation with test data. They used a criterion expressed
in terms of three S±N curves obtained from fatigue
testing of o€-axis unidirectional specimens under uni-
axial oscillatory load with a stress ratio of 0.1. The form
of this criterion has been suggested using two distinct
experimentally observed failure modes: ®ber and matrix.
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: hkadi@aus.ac.ae (H. El Kadi).
fatigue tests on composite laminae in an e€ort to char-
acterize the matrix/interface-controlled failure. They
attempted to ®t their data obtained at a stress ratio of
0.1, by using a power law equation.
Tennyson [3] and Tennyson et al. [4] concluded that
there was a reasonable cause to believe that their tensor
polynomial criterion for static failure can be modi®ed to
incorporate `fatigue functions' which will permit pre-
liminary estimates of the fatigue life of a given lamina
under axial loading condition.
Ellyin and El Kadi [5] used the data obtained from the
previously mentioned references [1,2] and showed that the
strain energy can be used as a fatigue failure criterion for
®ber-reinforced laminae. A fatigue failure criterion was
proposed based on the input strain energy. They later [6]
extended their criterion to take into account both the ®ber
orientation angle and the value of the stress ratio. Fatigue
behavior of unidirectional glass ®ber/epoxy composite
laminae under tension±tension and tension±compression
loading was investigated. A non-dimensional form of this
criterion was shown to collapse all data points, obtained
from di€erent combinations of ®ber orientation angles
and stress ratios, onto a single curve.
Arti®cial neural networks (ANN) are one of the ar-
ti®cial intelligence concepts that have proved to be
useful various engineering applications [7±10]. Due to
their massively parallel structure, ANN can deal with
many multivariable nonlinear modeling for which an

0263-8223/01/$ - see front matter Ó 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 2 6 3 - 8 2 2 3 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 1 7 9 - 3
66 Y. Al-Assaf, H. El Kadi / Composite Structures 53 (2001) 65±71
accurate analytical solution is very dicult to obtain
[7,8]. The ability to learn by example is one of the key
aspects of ANN. The system is considered as a black
box and it is unnecessary to know the details of the in-
ternal behavior. These nets therefore may o€er an ac-
curate and cost e€ective approach for modeling fatigue
life. If trained adequately, the ANN can simply be used
to obtain the life prediction of a given set of ®ber ori-
entation/loading condition which is usually sought by
designers.
Only recently have ANN been used to predict fatigue
failure [11±13]. Artymiak et al. [11] used ANN to esti-
mate the ®nite-life fatigue strength and fatigue limit of
steel. Their predictions using ANN were found to be
superior to those obtained with conventional methods
for calculating the fatigue strength.
Venkatesh and Rack [12] trained a back-propagation
neural network to predict the elevated temperature
creep-fatigue behavior of Ni-base alloy INCONEL 690.
They concluded that the prediction accuracy using a few
iterations and a simple network architecture showed
signi®cant improvement when compared to Con±
Manson, linear life fraction and hysteresis energy pre-
diction techniques.
Pleune and Chopra [13] also trained a back-propa-
gation network to predict the fatigue life of carbon- and
low-alloy steels for speci®ed sets of loading and envi-
ronmental conditions. They showed that ANN have
great potential for predicting environmentally assisted
corrosion due to the fact that the predictions are purely
based on data and not on preconceptions. Another ad-
vantage was that the ANN could interpolate e€ects by
learning trends and patterns when complete data sets are
not available.
Although some work was done using ANN in the
study of fatigue, less work was done when the fatigue
was related to composite materials. The use of ANN to
predict fatigue strength of APC-2 graphite-PEEK
composites was addressed in the work by Aymerich and
Serra [14]. The data used was obtained for a stress ratio
of 0.1. The input parameters to the ANN were the
number of cycles to failure and the stacking sequence of
the laminate while obtaining the fatigue strength as an
output. They concluded that ANN is a very attractive
tool to model a set of fatigue data but should be used
carefully to avoid poor predictions.
Carbon ®ber and glass ®ber-reinforced composites
have been used by Lee et al. [15] to evaluate the per-
formance of ANN in predicting fatigue failure of lami-
nates under various stress ratios. They used the
maximum and minimum values of the stress as well as
the failure probability level as input parameters to the
ANN while obtaining the number of cycles to failure as
an output.
The use of ANN to predict the fatigue failure of glass
®ber/epoxy laminae with a range of ®ber orientation
angles under various loading conditions is considered in
this work.
2. Specimen and experimental procedure
The material used here was `Scotchply Reinforced
Plastic type 1003', a 3M product. This composite is a
non-woven, glass ®ber-reinforced epoxy resin material
designed for high performance structural applications.
The glass ®ber used is a continuous ®lament of the `E'
type. The uncured prepreg is supplied in rolls of unidi-
rectional orientation. The average uncured thickness of
the prepreg is 0.275 mm (0.011 in.) and reduces to 0.25
mm (0.010 in.) after curing.
Specimens [6] were fabricated using the aforemen-
tioned prepreg at ®ve di€erent ®ber orientation angles
(h ˆ 0°; 19°; 45°; 71° and 90°), where h is the angle be-
tween the ®ber direction and the direction of the applied
load. The thickness of the specimens for all the o€-axis
cases was 5 mm (0.2 in) [20 layers] while the thickness of
the 0° specimen was 2.5 mm (0.1 in) [10 layers]. The
width of all the specimens was 12.5 mm (0.5 in.). The
samples were laid in a specially designed mould (three at
a time), then cured at 150°C (300°F) for 12 h. Aluminum
tabs were then glued to the ends of the specimens for
gripping purposes.
The tests were performed using an MTS testing ma-
chine controlled by an IBM personal computer. Regular
tapered wedge grips (usually utilized for static tension
tests) were modi®ed to carry both tensile and compres-
sive loading [16].
3. Experimental investigation
Unidirectional ®ber-reinforced composite specimens
were cyclically tested under load control condition at
room temperature. These specimens were built with ®ber
angle orientations of 0°, 19°, 45°, 71° and 90° and were
tested under stress ratios (R) of 0.5, 0 and )1 with a
loading frequency of 3.3 Hz.
For the o€-axis cyclic tests, all the specimens had an
identical brittle failure mode. This failure was matrix-
dominated and at a direction parallel to the ®bers. For the
0° specimens, the failure mode was found to depend on the
magnitude of the applied stress. At high stress levels (close
to the monotonic strength), the failure mode was an
abrupt, broom-like failure accompanied by ®ber break-
age. At lower stress levels, delamination was observed and
failure occurred over an extended period of time.
The ®nal failure of the specimen was de®ned taking
into consideration the various failure modes: for the o€-
axis tests, failure was de®ned as the complete separation
of the coupon, while for 0° specimens it was de®ned as a
10% drop in the load-carrying capacity of the specimen.
 Y. Al-Assaf, H. El Kadi / Composite Structures 53 (2001) 65±71
4. Arti®cial neural networks
In general, feedforward ANN consist of a layer of
input neurons, a layer of output neurons and one or
more layers of hidden neurons [7,14]. Neurons in each
layer are fully interconnected to preceding and subse-
quent layer neurons with each interconnection having an
associated connection strength (or weight). The activa-
tion function used in the hidden and output layers'
neurons is nonlinear, whereas for the input layer no
activation function is used since no computation is in-
volved in that layer. Information ¯ows from one layer to
the other in a feedforward manner. Various functions,
such as sigmoidal, tanh or radial (Gaussian), were used
to model the neuron activity.
The input to a node i in the kth layer is given by
" #
X
neti;k ˆ wi;j;k outj;k 1 ‡ hi;k ;
j
where wi;j;k represents the weight connection strengths
for node j in the …k 1†th layer to node i in the kth layer;
outi;k the output of node i in the kth layer and hi;k is the
threshold associated with node i in the kth layer.
Collectively the hidden layers perform the application
desired objective whether it is classi®cation, modeling,
pattern recognition or otherwise.
The back-propagation training algorithm is com-
monly used to iteratively minimize the following cost
function with respect to the interconnection weights and
neurons thresholds:
1XP XN
2
Eˆ …di zi † :
2 1 iˆ1
In the previous equation, P is the number of training
patterns and N is the number of output nodes. di and zi
are the desired and actual responses for output node i,
respectively. Iteratively, the interconnection weights are
updated as follows [7]:
 X
N
wji …t ‡ 1† ˆ awji …t† ‡ gxi f 0 netkj …dl zl †f 0 …net0l †wlj ;
lˆ1
where a is a momentum constant, g the learning rate, xi
the input pattern at the iterative sample t, net0N the input
to node N at the output layer and netkj is the input to a
node j in the kth layer. The training process is termi-
nated either when the mean square error (MSE) between
the observed data and the ANN outcomes for all ele-
ments in the training set has reached a pre-speci®ed
threshold or after the completion of a pre-speci®ed
number of learning epochs.
Multilayer feedforward ANN with back-propagation
training have been the most popular and commonly
used because of their adequate generalizing capabilities.
However, they were found to su€er from some draw-
67
backs such as local convergence and the need for large
training cases in order to make adequate generalization.
Other types and structures of neural networks such as
modular, radial-basis and recurrent networks could be
considered to overcome such problems and other
problems the training data may have.
Although all neural network models share common
operational feature, such as the distribution of knowl-
edge within the network and the massively parallel op-
eration of the system, to build a successful neural
network application the following conditions must be
carefully considered:
· Acquiring, modeling and conditioning the applica-
tion data.
· Selecting the appropriate network model.
· Selecting suitable parameters for the chosen network
and training it to perform the application.
5. Application design
For life prediction analysis of glass ®ber/epoxy com-
posite laminae it will be assumed that the fatigue is a
function of the ®ber orientation angle (h), minimum
(rmin ) and maximum (rmax ) stresses applied to the
specimen. Other parameters that could a€ect the mate-
rial's life such as the microstructure and process pa-
rameters will not be considered in this work. It will be
assumed that all specimens have similar features in that
regard. In fact all possible precautions were taken to
make sure that the manufacturing and testing conditions
were similar in all cases. Various parameters could be
adopted as inputs to the neural networks. These include
h; rmin ; rmax , stress ratio R ˆ rmin =rmax , stress range
Dr ˆ rmax rmin and mean stress rm ˆ …rmax ‡ rmin †=2 .
The single output of the network is the number of stress
cycles applied to the specimen before it fails.
Since the range of number of cycles to failure varied
between 300 and 1,000,000, training the networks to
learn such a wide range will produce unacceptable and
unbalanced modeling performance. This will occur since
the ANN will strive to minimize the overall MSE for all
input patterns. Hence, minimizing the di€erence be-
tween the network output and observed data for the
high number of cycles would be at the expense of the
lower values. Classical normalization, where the range is
scaled between 0 and 1, will also not solve the problem
since smaller values of life cycles will be very close to
zero. To make the output amenable for successful
learning, the logarithmic values for the number of cycles
to failure were considered; this reduced the scale to lie
between 0.5 and 6. The maximum stress applied varied
between 13 and 760 MPa. The ®ber orientation angle
had ®ve values, namely: 0°, 19°, 45°, 71° and 90°. The
values for rmax and h were normalized between 0 and 1
for network training and testing. R had three values,
68 Y. Al-Assaf, H. El Kadi / Composite Structures 53 (2001) 65±71

namely: 0, 1 and )1. Ninety two experimental points

made up the application data. The Neurosolution
Software [17] was used to construct, train and test the
networks.

6. Development of ANN

As mentioned before, appropriate selection of ANN

inputs and network structure is very critical in achieving
adequate results. It is considered that the most suitable
set of inputs are the ones which would lead to a network
that would give the least normalized mean square error
(NMSE). Fig. 1 shows the NMSE values as well as the
corresponding correlation coecients (r) for di€erent set
of inputs. The network used had one hidden layer made
of 12 neurons. The momentum factor and learning rate
used were 0.92 and 0.1, respectively. As shown in Fig. 1,
the best set of inputs to be used is h, R and rmax . A
justi®cation could be that only three values of R are
supplying the network with the same amount of infor-
mation as would 92 values of Dr; rmin or rm . It is worth
mentioning that these results are not in agreement with
the results given in the work of Lee et al. [15]. This could
be due to various reasons such as di€erent material
properties, di€erent ANN structures and the e€ect of
®ber orientation.
Fig. 2 shows the e€ect of the number of hidden layers
on the ANN performance. Each hidden layer used
contained 12 neurons. This ®gure shows that using one
hidden layer resulted in the lowest NMSE with the
highest value of r. In addition to obtaining the best re-
sults using one hidden layer, the complexity of the ANN
decreased signi®cantly. Although gradually decreasing
the number of neurons in subsequent layers resulted in
improved performance for the multi-hidden layer net-
works, the results obtained using one hidden layer were
still superior.
Fig. 2. E€ect of number of hidden layers on the ANN performance.
The e€ect of the number of neurons in the hidden
layer on the ANN performance was investigated next.
Fig. 3 shows the variations of the NMSE and r for
various numbers of hidden layer neurons. A hidden
layer of 12 neurons resulted in the best performance.
Experimental results suggest that the optimum network
architecture contains a ratio of four hidden neurons to
every input parameter.
7. Life prediction using ANN
Experimental results obtained for di€erent ®ber ori-
entation angles under a variety of loading conditions
were compared to the predictions using ANN. Follow-
ing the development of the most appropriate ANN
structure, the network used is of the feedforward type
with one hidden layer containing 12 neurons. The input
vector to the network consisted of normalized values of
h, R and rmax with the output being the logarithmic
value of the number of cycles to failure.

Fig. 3. E€ect of number of neurons in the hidden layer on the ANN

Fig. 1. Results of trials to obtain the optimum inputs to the ANN. performance.
 Y. Al-Assaf, H. El Kadi / Composite Structures 53 (2001) 65±71 69

Figs. 4±8 show the comparison between the experi-

mental and predicted values for di€erent values of h.
Each plot consists of the three di€erent values of R.
Generally, the prediction is reasonably accurate. How-
ever, the predictions for h ˆ 0° were found to be more
accurate than those for the other ®ber orientation an-
gles. This is probably due to the uniformity of the me-
chanical properties obtained in a 0° specimen, where the
®ber is tested compared to the o€-axis specimens when
the e€ect of matrix property discrepancy is more pro-
nounced.
It is also noticed that the experimental data contained
a few points with two signi®cantly di€erent number of
cycles to failure for a given maximum stress for the same Fig. 6. Comparison between experimental and ANN predicted num-
R and h. The occurrence of such cases is more noticeable ber of cycles to failure for h ˆ 45° laminae.
for R ˆ 0:5, where the rmax ±N relationship is almost
horizontal. Hence, any slight variation in the internal
structure of the material can signi®cantly alter the fa-
tigue life. Such con¯icting data points would deteriorate
the prediction performance of the ANN. It was found
that, in most cases, the neural network would compro-

Fig. 7. Comparison between experimental and ANN predicted num-

ber of cycles to failure for h ˆ 71° laminae.

Fig. 4. Comparison between experimental and ANN predicted num-

ber of cycles to failure for h ˆ 0° laminae.

Fig. 8. Comparison between experimental and ANN predicted num-

ber of cycles to failure for h ˆ 90° laminae.

mise and give a life prediction close to the average of the

Fig. 5. Comparison between experimental and ANN predicted num-
ber of cycles to failure for h ˆ 19° laminae.
experimental data points. Such compromise would have
a negative e€ect on the overall ANN prediction accu-
racy. To overcome such a problem, the data could be
conditioned prior to the training stage or alternatively
other types of ANN such as recurrent networks could be
70 Y. Al-Assaf, H. El Kadi / Composite Structures 53 (2001) 65±71

used. Such recurrent structures would allow the network

to deal with con¯icting patterns that represent one to
many mapping. Furthermore these networks deal with
such conditions by augmenting the input pattern with
the condition at the hidden layer at the previous time
steps. The use of such ANN structures will be investi-
gated in future work.
The experimental data and predictions using ANN
can also be represented for the various stress ratios as
shown in Figs. 9±11. In these ®gures, it is well shown
that the ANN accurately predict the given fatigue data.
Although the number of training data points (92 points)
used in this work was small compared to Lee et al. [15]
(400 points), the ANN was able to give accurate pre-
dictions. The nonlinear modeling obtained by the neural
network can be utilized to predict fatigue failure for this
material for any ®ber orientation angles at the desired
loading conditions.

8. Conclusion

Arti®cial neural networks can be trained to model the

nonlinear behavior of composite laminae subjected to
cyclic loading. The feedforward network used provided Fig. 10. Comparison between experimental and ANN predicted
accurate relationship between the input parameters number of cycles to failure for R ˆ 0:5.
(maximum stress, stress ratio, ®ber orientation angle)
and the number of cycles to failure. Although a small
number of experimental data points was used for

Fig. 9. Comparison between experimental and ANN predicted num- Fig. 11. Comparison between experimental and ANN predicted
ber of cycles to failure for R ˆ 0. number of cycles to failure for R ˆ 1.
 Y. Al-Assaf, H. El Kadi / Composite Structures 53 (2001) 65±71 71

training the neural network, the results obtained are [6] El Kadi H, Ellyin F. E€ect of stress ratio on the fatigue of
comparable to other current fatigue life-prediction unidirectional glass ®ber/epoxy composite laminae. Composites
1994;25:917±24.
methods. [7] Skapura D. Building neural networks. New York: ACM Press,
The use of other types of neural networks such as Addison-Wesley Publishing Company; 1996.
recurrent, associative memory and self organizing net- [8] Herzallah R, Al-Assaf Y. Control of nonlinear and time-variant
works to improve the prediction accuracy will be the dunamic ystems using neural networks. In: Proceedings of the
subject of further work. Furthermore, the utilization of Fourth World Multiconference on SYSTEMICS, CYBERNET-
ICS and INFORMATICS, Florida; 2000.
the neural networks to predict the fatigue life for dif- [9] Mansoor W, Al-Nashash H, Al-Assaf Y. Image classi®cation
ferent types of composite materials will also be consid- using wavelets and neural networks. In: Proceedings of the 18th
ered. IASTED International Conference on Applied Informatics. Aus-
tria: Innsbruck; 2000.
[10] Al-Nashash H, Al-Assaf Y, Lvov B, Mansoor W. Laser speckle
References for materials classi®cation utilizing wavelets and neural networks
image processing techniques. Mater Eval J (submitted).
[11] Artymiak P, Bukowski L, Feliks J, Narberhaus S, Zenner H.
[1] Hashin Z, Rotem A. A fatigue failure criterion for ®ber reinforced
Determination of S±N curves with the application of arti®cial
materials. J Compos Mater 1973;7:448±64.
neural networks. Fatigue Fract Eng Mater Struct 1999;22:723±8.
[2] Awerbuch J, Hahn HT. O€-axis fatigue of graphite/epoxy
[12] Venkatesh V, Rack HJ. A neural network approach to elevated
composites. In: Lauraitis KN, editor. Fatigue of ®brous compos-
temperature creep-fatigue life prediction. Int J Fatigue 1999;
ite materials, ASTM STP 723. Philadelphia, PA: American
21:225±34.
Society for Testing and Materials; 1981. p. 243±73.
[13] Pleune TT, Chopra OK. Using arti®cial neural networks to
[3] Tennyson RC. Strength and fatigue life design procedures for
predict the fatigue life of carbon and low-alloy steels. Nucl Eng
composite structures. In: Proceedings of Eighth Symposium of
Design 2000;197:1±12.
Engineering Applications of Mechanics. Ottawa: National Re-
[14] Aymerich F, Serra M. Prediction of fatigue strength of composite
search Council of Canada (NRCC);1986. p. 32±9.
laminates by means of neural networks. Key Eng Mater 1998;
[4] Tennyson RC, Wharram GE, Mabson GE. Final report on
144:231±40.
investigation of static failure and compressive fatigue of CF-18
[15] Lee JA, Almond DP, Harris B. The use of neural networks for the
graphite/Epoxy laminates: part 1: experimental evaluation.
prediction of fatigue lives of composite materials. Composites
Defense Research Establishment Paci®c, Research and Devel-
A 1999;30:1159±69.
opment Branch, Victoria, BC: Department of National Defense;
[16] El Kadi H. Analysis and failure of ®ber reinforced composites.
1986.
Ph.D. thesis, Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta; 1993.
[5] Ellyin F, El Kadi H. A fatigue failure criterion for ®ber reinforced
[17] NeuroSolutions software www.nd.com, 2000.
composite laminae. Compos Struct 1990;15:61±74.