The increasing use of advanced composite materials means that they must now be considered as major materials for a wide variety of structures some of which will be in service for decades. There is therefore an important need to be able to quantify damage accumulation leading to failure in these materials particularly as they are often used in extreme situations for which failure must be avoided. This review shows how damage accumulation in many major composite structures is dominated by fibre failure but that the viscoelastic nature of the matrix induces time effects including delayed failure. It is shown that damage accumulation can be quantitatively modelled using a multi-scale approach linking damage at the fibre level to the overall reliability of the structure. The structures of particular interest are composite pressure vessels. At the microscopic level it is necessary to identify a representative volume element which includes all the processes which govern composite behaviour and failure. In this way the macroscopic loading of the composite structure can be evaluated at every point and overall behaviour qualitatively assessed. This allows the effects of loading to failure to be quantitatively calculated as well as the effects of loading at a constant level for long periods. It is shown that failure occurs when clusters of fibre breaks reach a critical level as has been observed experimentally. The effects of speed of loading and long term failure have also been observed experimentally as predicted by the simulations of structures including filament wound carbon fibre composite pressure vessels. This leads to the quantitative analysis of intrinsic safety factors for advanced composite structure based on a knowledge of the physical damage processes involved.

越来越多地使用先进复合材料意味着它们现在必须被视为各种结构的主要材料，其中一些结构将使用数十年。因此，非常需要能够量化导致这些材料失效的损伤累积，特别是因为它们经常用于必须避免失效的极端情况。这篇综述显示了许多主要复合结构中的损伤累积是如何由纤维破坏主导的，但基体的粘弹性性质会引起时间效应，包括延迟破坏。结果表明，可以使用将纤维级别的损伤与结构的整体可靠性联系起来的多尺度方法对损伤累积进行定量建模。特别感兴趣的结构是复合压力容器。在微观层面，有必要确定一个具有代表性的体积元素，其中包括控制复合行为和失效的所有过程。通过这种方式，可以在每个点评估复合结构的宏观载荷，并定性评估整体行为。这允许定量计算加载到失效的影响以及长时间以恒定水平加载的影响。结果表明，当纤维断裂簇达到实验观察到的临界水平时，就会发生故障。加载速度和长期失效的影响也已通过实验观察到，正如对包括纤维缠绕碳纤维复合材料压力容器在内的结构的模拟所预测的那样。