Factors that Affect the Fatigue Life of Rubber: A Literature Survey

Abstract

Many factors are known to influence the mechanical fatigue life of rubber components. Four major categories of factors are reviewed here: the effects of mechanical loading history, environmental effects, effects of rubber formulation, and effects due to dissipative aspects of the constitutive response of rubber. For each category, primary factors are described, and existing literature is presented and reviewed. Rubber's fatigue behavior is extremely sensitive to both the maximum and minimum cyclic load limits. Other aspects of the mechanical load history are also discussed, including the effects of static loaded periods (“annealing”), load sequence, multiaxiality, frequency, and loading waveform. Environmental factors can affect both the short and long term fatigue behavior of rubber. The effects of temperature, oxygen, ozone, and static electrical charges are reviewed. A great range of behavior is available by proper manipulation of formulation and processing variables. Effects of elastomer type, filler type and volume fraction, antidegradants, curatives, and vulcanization are discussed. The role of dissipative constitutive behavior in the improvement of fatigue properties of rubber is also reviewed. Four distinct dissipative mechanisms are identified, and their effects on fatigue behavior are described.

Fatigue fracture of tough hydrogels

“…Fatigue fracture of tough hydrogels, however, has remained unexplored. This lack of information on fatigue fracture of tough hydrogels hinders their further development, knowing that fatigue fracture is a critical mode of failure of all other tough materials, including metals, plastics, elastomers and composites [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34].…”

Fatigue prediction in fibrin poly-ε-caprolactone macroporous scaffolds

“…The resistance of the material to mechanical fatigue can be influenced by several factors such as mechanical loading history, environmental conditions, polymer composition and to certain aspects of stress-strain constitutive behavior (Mars, 2004). Several mathematical models firstly developed to predict metallic materials and composites during load-recovery cycles such as Coffin-Manson, Smith-Watson-Topper (SWT) or Morrow models (Ince and Glinka, 2011).…”

The Significance of Equi-Biaxial Bubble Inflation in Determining Elastomeric Fatigue Properties

“…Perhaps the most comprehensive overview of elastomeric fatigue was provided by Mars and Fatemi in 2004 [1], though inevitably there has been extensive research into the topic since then. At the time, they placed factors influencing elastomer fatigue into four categories: mechanical loading history, environmental effects, rubber formulation and effects due to dissipative aspects of the constitutive response of rubber.…”

“…Doubt is one aspect of width." 1 As yet, there are few certainties in the determination of fatigue life for rubber components. Scepticism is an essential characteristic for a researcher and the study of elastomeric fatigue is a prodigiously wide topic.…”

“…Decisions to plot fatigue data against parameters used for metals (minimum stress, maximum stress, maximum strain, stress amplitude) are arbitrary and again an alternative approach is suggested in this text. Mars and Fatemi [7] highlighted a lack of understanding of the effects of multi-axial fatigue loading of elastomers and pointed to a tendency to use thin laboratory specimens though, unlike linear elastic solids, rubbers experience significant size effects [8,9]. They concluded that the following factors are important;  the relationship between the applied loads and the localised load experienced by a crack,  whether or not applied loads cause closure of initial cracks  the dependence of material properties on the type and magnitude of the imposed deformation (e.g.…”