Fatigue behavior and life prediction of biodegradable composites of starch reinforced with date palm fibers

This work studies the fatigue behavior of biodegradable composites of thermoplastic starch (TPS) reinforced with different amounts of date palm fibers (DPF) (20, 50, and 70 wt%). Composite with 50 wt% fiber content had higher static and fatigue strengths compared to other composites. The alternating stress at which the composites lasted for 107 cycles was about 16% of the flexural strength. Mathematical models following the assumptions of D'Amore et al. (1996) and Mao and Mahadevan (2002) were shown to give a good agreement with experimental results of the residual strengths under various fatigue cycles and of the fatigue damage index at different levels of stresses. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.