An Exponential Damage Model for Strength of Fibrous Composite Materials

When modeling experimental data observed from carefully performed tensile strength tests, statistical distributions are typically used to describe the strength of composite specimens. Recently, cumulative damage models derived for predicting tensile strength have been shown to be superior to other models when used to fit composite strength data. Here, an alternative model is developed which is based on an exponential cumulative damage approach. The model is shown to exhibit a similar structural form to the other models in the literature so that previous theory for cumulative damage models can be utilized to find parameter estimates.