Hi RWA
At the risk of being completely wrong...
I don't think that the rudder would feedback force to the pedals. Even in a non FBW plane this big the controls are moved by hydraulic actuators. The pedal force feel is artificially generated (by the artificial feel box or Q-feel box) which simply converts a pedal position and dynamic pressure into a force.
On another point about composites, when I was at Airbus working on VTP structures we always used hot/wet testing (both heat and moisture degrade composite structural properties). I don't know about the fatigue work as I wasn't involved but I don't think it would have been done differently. Thats not the same as fluid getting into a sandwich structure, as with the rudder failures, which is a more serious problem.