Effects of Carbon Black on the Fatigue Life, Critical J-Value and Fracture Morphology and a New Estimated Equation for Natural Rubber

This study investigated the fatigue lives and mechanical properties of the carbon black filled natural rubber for the vibration-proof parts of the railway vehicle and automobile. The carbon blacks were one of the sources of crack nucleation and crack propagation in the rubber matrix, like the cementite and the maganese sulfide in iron matrix. Different kinds of carbon blacks resulted in different fatigue lives, critical J-values, and fracture morphologies. It was noticed that the critical J-value remained almost the same regardless of the length of a pre-crack. In addition, different kinds of carbon blacks generated different fracture morphologies, and microscopic and macroscopic roughnesses. The critical J-value has linear relations to the roughness, and it seemed related to the size distribution of carbon black particles. By reviewing all the experi-mental data, we found the factors that were related to the fatigue lives, and the logarithmic value of the fatigue life could be linearly expressed by the combination of the critical J-value and the macroscopic roughness. We also proposed a new estimative equation of fatigue life.