Lyman,
Here is some additional resources for you to read through which addresses some of the issues you have brought up. The first is what the FAA looked at and did regarding the 787 certification process.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11849.pdf
Here is a presentation given by Boeing in Dayton, OH in October 2008 regarding composite testing.
http://academic.udayton.edu/stevendo...ons/Mabson.pdf
Here is a photo of the interior of a fuselage section section similar to section 48
When you talk about strength, here is a reference table
The strength comes from the carbon fiber which is slightly less than 3X the strength of high tensile steel while having a density 4X less when compared to the same steel.
You were correct about delamination. Delamination occurs between the layers of material where the bonding material is present, not across layers, that would be an over tensile strength failure.
One of the reasons you do not find much information about composites is the fact that much of the development work was done by NASA or DARPA for sensitive military aircraft that are currently flying in the USAF inventory. I saw a site that had to do with the subject of reclaiming composite material from the 787 that is not used (the material is expensive) One photo depicted a cross-section of the fuselage composite material (at least that is what they indicated). It would appear there are 14 layers of material bonded together making up the total cross-section.
As far as aging is concerned, remember, all the GE90 fan blades are composite material, not that different from the Boeing material. As you can imagine, they undergo various gyrations during operation, bending, twisting, impacts radial stressing, etc. They have preformed very well, better overall than titanium fan blades. Not many have been discarded except for extreme FOD, birds especially and the most less damaged blades are generally repairable.
More will be learned with the advent of the GEnx engines, the fan casing as well as the fan blades are made from composite material.