Every time you apply a full load cycle to a composite, you get some level of micro delamination. In theory the designer should determine what loads it must handle and what lifetime they want and back out the laminate. This is true for all plastic laminates and aluminum. Steel is different. Carbon and aluminum crack and fall apart. Steel gets flexy. In Engineering this usually lumped under fatigue.
The micro-delamination of a carbon-composite in a load-cycle, I don't quite understand. Nor the aluminium vulnerability.
If you stay with your loads far within the maximum tension values( I forgot the correct technical english for that), you don't damage the molecullar structure, aren't you????????
So, no hairline-cracks, no delamination, etc.
Besides, the aluminium fatigue I know, has often to do with outside surface-erosion (or inside; in closed tubes-constructions, like bicycles)
Is it not that this phenomenon which you describe, only applies for the situation that you pass now and then unforseenly and unwanted the stress-values of your material.?????????
