Recent advances in fatigue life prediction methods for rubber components

Abstract

Crack nucleation and crack growth approaches for analyzing the fatigue behavior of rubber components are complementary paradigms that can be applied depending on analysis objectives. Curiously, the crack growth approach has received relatively more attention in the rubber literature over the last 50 years, and seems to have arrived to a more mature state than the nucleation approach. There remains a need for further development of the nucleation approach. Traditional equivalence parameters, which are used in theories of crack nucleation to evaluate the relative level of multiaxial loading conditions, are based on scalar magnitudes, and are not adequate due to the plane-specific nature of the nucleation phenomenon. Cracking energy density is presented as one example of a plane-specific equivalence parameter. Fatigue analysis methods must account for various effects in rubber that are observed under constant amplitude testing. These include crack closure, R-ratio, and loading amplitude. Finally, since most real-world components experience complex loading histories unlike the simple histories used for characterizing fatigue behavior, methods of inferring the fatigue behavior of variable amplitude signals from constant amplitude test results are required. Proposed approaches of predicting variable amplitude fatigue behavior of rubber based on constant amplitude data are presented.

Publication Title

Current Topics in Elastomers Research

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