Experiment of uniaxial tension fatigue and modeling of fatigue life for filled natural rubbers

Abstract

A uniaxial tension fatigue test is carried out for two filled natural rubber specimens, dumbbell simple tension specimen (STS) and dumbbell cylinder specimen (DCS). Based on the STS experimental data, the fatigue life prediction models using some commonly used damage parameters (maximum principal strain, octahedral shear strain and strain energy density) are established and used for estimating fatigue life. The comparison of estimated and measured fatigue lives for STS shows that all damage parameters discussed can be used to estimate tension fatigue life with correlation coefficient greater than 0.9, among which the model using maximum principal Green-Lagrange strain peak has the largest correlation coefficient with a value of 0.9966. Based on the model using maximum principal Green-Lagrange strain peak of STS, the fatigue life of a DCS is estimated. The estimated fatigue life of a DCS is compared with the measured data, which shows a good correlation. It is concluded that one can carry out only tension fatigue test using STS to model the tension fatigue of rubbers, with a lower cost and shorter test period. © 2013 Journal of Mechanical Engineering.