Abstract
Rubber parts are widely used in many applications such as dampers, shock absorbers, and seals used in railway and automotive industries. Much research has thus far been conducted on property estimation and life prediction of rubber parts. To predict the service life of rubber parts at room temperature, most prior work adopts the well-known Arrhenius model that needs the accelerated life test in high-temperature conditions. However, they may not reflect the actual conditions of use that rubber parts are usually used under a specific strain condition during long period of time. In this context, we propose a method for the life prediction of rubber parts in actual conditions of use. The proposed method is based on the accelerated life test using stress relaxation during which three relatively high elongation percentages (100%, 200%, and 300%) are applied to the rubber specimens. Rubber specimens were prepared in accordance with KS M 6518 standard and three stress relaxation testers were fabricated for actual experiments. Finally, a inverse power model for life prediction was derived from experimental results. The predicted life was compared with the actual test life for validation.
