Appl Compos Mater (2011) 18:297309 DOI 10.

1007/s10443-010-9158-7

Using Artificial Neural Networks to Predict the Fatigue Life of Different Composite Materials Including the Stress Ratio Effect
Mohamed Al-Assadi & Hany A. El Kadi & Ibrahim M. Deiab

Received: 14 June 2010 / Accepted: 4 August 2010 / Published online: 13 August 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have been successfully used in predicting the fatigue behavior of fiber-reinforced composite materials. In most cases, the predictions were obtained for the same material used in training subjected to different loading conditions. The method would be of greater value if one could predict the failure of materials other than those used for training the network. In a recent paper, ANN trained using the experimental fatigue data obtained for composites subjected to a constant stress ratio R s min =s max was successfully used to predict the cyclic behavior of a composite made of a different material. In this work, this method is extended to include the stress ratio effect. The results show that ANN can provide accurate fatigue life prediction for different materials under different values of the stress ratio. These results can allow for the development of a materials smart database that can be used for various engineering applications. Keywords Artificial neural networks . Composite materials . Fatigue . Stress ratio

1 Introduction In many applications using polymeric composites, the material is subjected to cyclic loading. It is therefore important to be able to accurately predict the behavior of these materials under such conditions. With the unidirectional lamina being the building block of the laminate, it might also be beneficial to initially predict the behavior of the lamina under cyclic loading. These results can hopefully be extended to predict the fatigue behavior of laminates. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), with their massively parallel structure, can deal with many multivariable non-linear problems for which an accurate analytical solution is difficult to obtain. In the area of composite materials, ANN have already been used in modeling the static and cyclic behavior of these materials, controlling the manufacturing
M. Al-Assadi : H. A. El Kadi (*) : I. M. Deiab College of Engineering, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates e-mail: hkadi@aus.edu

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parameters used in their machining, predicting their wear properties, among others [1, 2]. The system can be considered as a black box rendering the knowledge of its internal behavior unnecessary to most users. ANN generally consist of an input layer (where the input patterns are applied), an output layer (where the output is obtained) and one or more hidden layers (so named because their outputs are not directly observable) between the input and output layers (see Fig. 1) [1]. For predicting the fatigue life of composites, the input parameters may include static and cyclic properties of the composite material under consideration, its lay-up, the maximum applied stress, the stress ratio, etc. The output parameter could be the fatigue life of this composite under the given loading conditions. Neurons in each layer are fully or partially interconnected to preceding and subsequent layer neurons with each interconnection having an associated connection weight. The input signal propagates through the network in a forward direction, on a layer-by-layer basis. These networks are commonly referred to as multilayer feed-forward neural networks (FNN). Many publications discuss the development and theory of ANN [for example, 37]. Even though all neural network architectures share common operational features, input requirements and modeling and generalization abilities could be different. Consequently, each structure would have its pros and cons depending on the particular application it is used for and selecting the appropriate network class is imperative to ensure accurate results. More details about the various ANN structures, their similarities and differences can also be found in [37]. The back-propagation training algorithm [5] is commonly used to iteratively minimize the following cost function with respect to the interconnection weights: E
P N 1 XX di Oi 2 2 1 i1

where P is the number of experimental data pairs used in training the network and N is the number of output parameters expected from the ANN. di and Oi represent the experimental number of cycles to failure and the current life prediction of the ANN for each loading condition i respectively.

Fig. 1 General configuration of an artificial neural network (with permission of Elsevier) [1]

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The training process is terminated either when the Mean-Square-Error (MSE), RootMean-Square-Error (RMSE), or Normalized-Mean-Square-Error (NMSE), between the actual experimental results and the ANN predictions obtained for all elements in the training set has reached a pre-specified threshold or after the completion of a pre-specified number of learning epochs.

2 Fatigue Failure Prediction of Composites Using ANN Artificial neural networks have been successfully used to predict the fatigue life of a composite material subjected to different loading conditions. El Kadi, in a recent review [1], showed that ANN can give comparable predictions to those normally obtained by conventional methods. It was also shown that factors such as ANN architecture, input parameters, number of hidden layers and number of neurons in each hidden layer, can influence the accuracy of the results obtained. The use of ANN to predict fatigue strength of APC-2 graphite/PEEK composites for 0.1 stress ratio was addressed in the work by Aymerich and Serra [8]. The input parameters to the ANN were the number of cycles to failure and the stacking sequence of the laminate while the fatigue strength was the sole output. The number of neurons used in the hidden layer varied from 4 to 12 to assure a good compromise between speed and precision. The authors concluded that ANN are able to predict fatigue life of fiber reinforced laminates provided that a sufficiently large set of experimental data, representative of the characteristic damage models of the category of examined sequence, is available. Lee et al. [9] utilized ANN in predicting fatigue failure of carbon fiber-reinforced laminates under various stress ratios (0.1 to 10). They investigated the use of various input parameters to find the combination resulting in the optimum fatigue life prediction. Using the maximum and minimum values of the stress as well as the failure probability level as input parameters and the number of cycles to failure as the output resulted in the best predictions. The authors also investigated the effect of the number of hidden layers and the number of stress ratios used in training on the fatigue life prediction accuracy. Their results showed that ANN can be trained to model constant-stress fatigue behavior at least as well as other current life-prediction methods. The use of ANN to predict the fatigue failure of unidirectional glass/epoxy composite for a range of fiber orientation angles under various loading conditions was also considered by Al-Assaf and El Kadi [10]. Feed-forward neural networks (FNN) provided accurate relationship between the input parameters (maximum stress, stress ratio, fiber orientation angle) and the number of cycles to failure. In spite of the small number of training data points used, the results obtained were found to be comparable to other current fatigue lifeprediction methods. In a quest to improve the fatigue-life prediction accuracy, other types of ANN structures were used [11]. Radial Basis Function (RBF), Modular (MNN), SelfOrganizing Features Maps (SOFM) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) neural networks were considered and their predictions compared to achieve the above-mentioned objective. The modular networks resulted in the most accurate prediction of the fatigue life for the material under consideration as the normalized mean square-error was reduced from 14.27% in the case of FNN to 5.7% for MNN. Vassilopoulos et al. [12] demonstrated that ANN is a good tool for modeling the fatigue life of multidirectional glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP) composite laminates. Tensiontension, compression-compression and tension-compression loading patterns were investigated and modeling accuracy of the proposed ANN model was validated. The fiber

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orientation, stress ratio, maximum applied stress as well as stress amplitude were the input parameter and the number of cycles to fatigue was the output of the neural network. The smallest values for the mean square error (MSE) were obtained with 8 hidden neurons for the case of [0/(45)2/0]T laminates and with 24 hidden neurons for the case of [90/0/45/0]s laminates. Comparing the predictions with the experimental results showed a good agreement. Freire Jnior et al. [13] used a modular network to predict the fatigue life of [90/0/45/0]8 fiberglass laminates tested under 12 values of the stress ratio. One hidden layer with a number of neurons ranging between 4 and 30 was used. The input parameters to the network were the alternating stress and the number of cycles to fatigue and the output was the mean stress. Training of the ANN was attempted with data obtained from 3 to 6 values of the stress ratio. Even by only using three S-N curves in the training, satisfactory results were obtained. A more reliable solution was obtained when the number of training S-N curves increased. The modular neural network used gave better predictions than the authors had previously obtained using feed forward neural networks [14]. Freire Jnior et al. [15] later assessed the applicability of two ANN architectures (multi-layer feed-forward and modular) in the prediction of fatigue life in composites compared to the equation developed by Adam [16] for modeling the constant-life diagram. GFRP in the form of laminar structures with distinct stacking sequences were used in the study. These materials were tested for six different stress ratios. The results showed that modeling of constant-life diagram can be done using ANN while requiring a much smaller set of experimental data compared to Adams equation. Analysis of the model created with the modular network architecture showed that this network produced much better results than those obtained by both the feed-forward network and by Adams equation for all the laminates analyzed. In all the previously-mentioned studies using ANN to predict the fatigue life of fiber reinforced composites, the authors only used one specific material in their study. It should be mentioned however, that one of the anticipated benefits of the successful application of ANN should be the possibility of predicting the lives of materials for which no fatigue data is available by using known cyclic characteristics of other materials.

3 Fatigue Failure Prediction of New Composite Materials Lee et al. [9] trained an ANN on data from four different material systems to predict the fatigue properties of a fifth material not used in the training. Monotonic mechanical properties of this additional material were also used in training. They obtained predictions with a root mean square error (RMSE) of the order of 100% for the prediction of the same material system and of 170% for a different material systems (for example, carbon fiber systems in training vs. glass fiber system in testing). The authors therefore concluded that it is unlikely to transfer the accurate predictive capability of a network from one family of composites to another. El Kadi [1] had however suggested that better predictions might be achieved if a larger number of representative materials was used in the testing and appropriate material properties were used in both the training and the testing stages. El Kadi and Al-Assaf [17], in a preliminary study, trained a modular neural network to predict the number of cycles to failure for different composite materials under a constant stress ratio. They used five materials to train the ANN and one additional material for testing. The input parameters were comprised of monotonic and cyclic properties (strength, modulus, fiber orientation, maximum applied stress). The RMSE was found to be 36.2% well below the value obtained by Lee et al. [9].

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In a recent study, Al-Assadi et al. [18] used ANN to predict the fatigue life for composite materials other that those used for training. Seven different materials were used in training the network for the purpose of predicting the fatigue behavior of an eighth material. All materials used were subjected to a cyclic loading with a constant stress ratio of 0.1. The effect of the ANN architecture, the type of training algorithm as well as the number of neurons per hidden layer was addressed. Although no singular ANN architecture/training method combination was shown to consistently produce the best predictions for all materials, the results showed that ANN can accurately predict the fatigue life of a composite not used in the training of the network. Depending on the material and the network architecture used, the typical root mean square error obtained varied between 8.8% and 16.3%. These predictions compared well with those obtained by Lee et al. [9] where the average root mean square error was much higher as previously mentioned in this section. The current investigation is an extension of this work for fatigue data taking the effect of the stress ratio into consideration.

4 Experimental Fatigue Data The current work addresses the fatigue behavior of unidirectional fiber reinforced laminates subjected to tension-tension, tension-compression and compression-compression fatigue loads. Experimental fatigue data collected from a variety of published works [1927] was used to train and test the ANN. This data included results obtained for various types of composite materials with numerous fiber orientation angles subjected to several values of the stress ratio. Table 1 shows the source of the experimental fatigue data used in the current investigation.

5 Artificial Neural Networks Different neural network architectures with a variety of training algorithms are used in this work to predict the fatigue life of fiber reinforced composite materials under a range of
Table 1 Source of experimental fatigue data used in the current investigation Material Glass/Epoxy AS/3501-5A Graphite/ Epoxy Fiber orientation angles Stress ratio 0,5,10,15,20,30,60 0,10,20,30,45,60,90 0.1 0.1 0.1,0.5,1 0.1,0.5,1,10 0.5,0.1,0.3,1 0,0.2,5, 0.1,0.5,1,2,10 0.1,0.6 Reference Hashin & Rotem [19] Awerbuch & Hahn [20] El Kadi & Ellyin [21] Philippidis & Vassilopoulos [22] Kawai & Suda [23] Jen & Lee [24] Epaarachchi & Clausen [25] Fernando & Dickson & Adam & Reiter & Harris[26]

Scotchply 1003 Glass/Epoxy 0,19,71,90 E-Glass/Polyester 0,15,30,45,60,90 T800H/2500 Carbon/Epoxy APC-2 AS4 Carbon/Peek Glass/Polyester XAS/914 Carbon/Epoxy Kevlar /914 Carbon/Epoxy 0,10,15,30,45,90 0,15,30,60,75,90 0,90 0 0

0.01,0.1,0.3,0.6 Fernando & Dickson & Adam & Reiter & Harris[27]

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stress ratios. In addition to the feed-forward neural network, three additional network architectures are used in the current investigation: Cascade-forward neural networks (CFNN), Elman neural networks (ELM) and Layer recurrent neural networks (LRN). A brief definition of these networks is shown in [1]. Besides the typical back-propagation algorithm, the following training algorithms were also considered in this study: Levenberg-Marquardt (LM), BFGS Quasi-Newton (BFG), Resilient back propagation (RP), Scaled conjugate gradient (SCG), Conjugate gradient with Powell/Beale restarts (CGB) and Polak-Ribire conjugate gradient (CGP). Details about the properties of these training algorithms can be found in [7]. For most of the cases considered, the RP training algorithm resulted in the lowest RMSE. For example, Table 2 shows the RMSE obtained when predicting the fatigue life of Kevlar/ Epoxy 914 using FNN with the aforementioned training algorithms. Therefore, throughout the rest of this study, only resilient back propagation training will be used. The advantage of the resilient back-propagation training algorithm is to eliminate the harmful effects resulting from using sigmoid transfer functions in the hidden layers. Sigmoid functions are characterized by the fact that their slopes must approach zero as the input gets large. This causes a problem when steepest descent is used to train a multilayer network because the gradient can have a very small magnitude and, therefore, causes small changes in the weights and biases, even though the weights and biases are far from their optimal values. Experimental data for the materials shown in Table 1 with the Matlab software [28] were used to construct, train and test the networks. The effects of ANN architecture, as well as number of hidden neurons were investigated to obtain the optimum fatigue life prediction.

6 Predicting Fatigue Life Using ANN In this study, the neural network is trained using all-but-one of the materials while the testing is done for the remaining material. The input parameters to the ANN consist of a combination of the following monotonic and cyclic properties: the modulus of elasticity in the fibers direction (E0), the modulus of elasticity in the direction perpendicular the fibers (E90), the static tensile strength of the laminate in the fibers to the direction S0 T , static tensile strength of the laminate in the direction perpendicular to the fibers S90 T , the static compressive strength of the laminate in the fiber direction C S0 ,the static compressive strength of the laminate in the direction perpendicular to the fibers S90 C , the fiber volume fraction (Vf), the fiber orientation angle (), the maximum
Table 2 RMSE for different training algorithms for Kevlar/Epoxy 914 Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 Algorithm Trainlm (LM) Trainbfg (BFG) Trainrp (RP) Trainscg (SCG) Traincgb (CGB) Traincgp (CGP) Function name Levenberg-Marquardt BFGS Quasi-Newton Resilient Back propagation Scaled Conjugate Gradient Conjugate Gradient with Powell/Beale Restarts Polak-Ribire Conjugate Gradient RMSE (%) 14.9 117.7 9.9 39.1 28.7 26.1

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applied stress (max), and the minimum applied stress (min). Although ten parameters are needed as an input to the network, it should be emphasized that the majority of these properties can be obtained from a few simple tension and compression tests. The number of cycles to failure (Nf) was the sole output from the network. It should be noted that, in this study, since the composite might be subjected to compressive loads, compressive laminate properties had to be included as input parameters to the network. This was not the case in [18] when the material was only subjected to a tension-tension fatigue load. Since the range of fatigue life varied between 3 and 10,000,000 cycles, 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 error for all input patterns. Hence, minimizing the difference between the network output and observed data for high values of stress cycles would be at the expense of the lower range 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 stress cycles were normalized reducing the scale to lie between 0.45 and 7. The maximum applied stress (varying between 280 and 2000 MPa) and the minimum applied stress (varying between 840 and 1000 MPa) were normalized between 1 and 1 while the fiber orientation angles which vary between 0 and 90 were normalized between 0 and 1 for network training and testing. In all cases, one hidden layer was used. Figures 2 and 3 show typical variations of the RMSE obtained using FNN for two of the materials considered as a function of the number of hidden neurons. For all cases considered [29], a number of hidden neurons between 6 and 12 lead to the most accurate fatigue life prediction. Figures 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 show the relation between the maximum applied stress and the number of cycles to failure for some of the materials considered. As previously indicated, for each of the cases, the fatigue data of the material shown was not used in training the neural network. These figures show the experimental results as well as typical predictions obtained using ANN. The neural network predictions were obtained using a variety of architectures with different numbers of hidden neurons. The predictions obtained are the average prediction of three runs with the same input parameters. This is done to

Fig. 2 Variation of RMSE with number of hidden neurons for Glass/Polyester composite

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Fig. 3 Variation of RMSE with number of hidden neurons for APC-2 Carbon/PEEK composite

reduce the inconsistencies that can result due to the randomness of the ANN initial guess. Using the average of a larger number of runs was not shown to result in a significant difference in the predictions. The results show that, in general, ANN can accurately predict the cyclic behavior of these materials. Figures 4 and 5 show the experimental vs the predicted data for Scotchply 1003 glass/epoxy with various fiber orientation angles for two different numbers of hidden neurons. These predictions were obtained using a FNN with a resilient back propagation training algorithm. The resulting RMSE was reduced from 16.7% using

Fig. 4 Fatigue life prediction of Scotchply 1003 Glass/Epoxy with different fiber orientation angles using FNN with 12 neurons

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Fig. 5 Fatigue life prediction of Scotchply 1003 Glass/Epoxy with different fiber orientation angles using FNN with 10 neurons

10 neurons to 15.9% using 12. Figures 6 and 7 show the on-axis fatigue life prediction for XAS-914 Carbon/Epoxy using an artificial neural network with 11 neurons. In this case, results obtained using FNN and CFNN architectures are shown. The RMSE were found to be 13.6% and 6.1% for the FNN and CFNN respectively. Figures 8 and 9

Fig. 6 On-axis fatigue life prediction of XAS-914 Carbon/Epoxy using FNN with 11 neurons

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Fig. 7 On-axis fatigue life prediction of XAS-914 Carbon/Epoxy using CFNN with 11 neurons

show the fatigue life prediction of AS-3501-5A Graphite/Epoxy with various fiber orientation angles using two neural networks architectures (CFNN and LRN) with 11 hidden neurons. The RMSE was reduced from 8.2% with the LRN to 7.8% using CFNN. Figure 10 shows the experimental results of APC-2 compared to the predictions

Fig. 8 Fatigue life prediction of AS-3501-5A Graphite/Epoxy with different fiber orientation angles using CFNN with 11 neurons

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Fig. 9 Fatigue life prediction of AS-3501-5A Graphite/Epoxy with different fiber orientation angles using LRN with 11 neurons

obtained for different fiber orientation angles using a FNN with 12 neurons. For the case shown, the RMSE obtained was found to be 13%. It is worth mentioning here that since it is well recognized that neural networks cannot extrapolate outside the range for which they are trained (i.e. even a well-trained ANN can

Fig. 10 Fatigue life prediction of APC-2 Carbon/PEEK with different fiber orientation angles using FNN with 12 neurons

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only be used to predict new data from the same knowledge domain), it is imperative to only use ANN to predict the fatigue life of materials for which the properties fall within the range of properties of materials used in training. For the various cases considered, it is shown that the ANN suitably predicts the behavior of the various materials under a variety of stress ratios. Although the ANN results vary based on the network architecture and the training algorithm used, the predictions obtained are acceptable in most cases. This study only addressed the fatigue life prediction of unidirectional composite laminates; the next step is to predict the cyclic behavior for multi-directional laminates taking into consideration the effect of the stacking sequence.

7 Conclusions Different neural network architectures with a variety of training algorithms were used to predict the fatigue life of fiber reinforced composite materials under a range of stress ratios. Training was performed on certain composites while the prediction was for different materials not used in the training process. Depending on the material and the network architecture used, the typical root mean square error obtained varied between 6.1% and 40%. These predictions compare well with those published in the literature where the average root mean square error was much higher. Resilient back propagation was found to consistently produce the best fatigue life prediction irrespective of the type of material or the type of network architecture used. With the use of a single hidden layer, a number of hidden neurons ranging between 6 and 12 yielded the best fatigue life predictions. Although acceptable predictions were obtained using FNN and CFNN, more accurate results could be obtained using other ANN architectures at the expense of a much longer training time.

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