• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.741-747
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• 2006

It has been almost impossible to predict the fatigue life in the field of rubber materials by numerical methods. One of the reasons is that there are no obvious fracture criteria and excessively various ways of mixing processes. Tearing energy is considered as a fracture criterion which can be applied to rubber compounds regardless of different types of fillers, relative to other fracture factors. Fatigue life of rubber materials can be approximately predicted based on the assumption that the latent defect caused by contaminants or voids in the matrix, imperfectly dispersed compounding ingredients, mold lubricants and surface flaws always exists. Numerical expression for the prediction of fatigue life was derived from the rate of rough cut growth region and the formulated tearing energy equation. Endurance test data for dumbbell specimens were compared with the predicted fatigue life for verification. Also, fatigue life of industrial rubber components was predicted.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.100-106
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• 2012

Recently, the demand to acquire and improve durability performance has steadily risen in rubber components design. In design process of a rubber component, an analytical prediction is the most effective way to improve fatigue life. Existing methods of analytical estimation have mainly used an equation for fatigue life obtained from fatigue test data. However, such formula is rarely used due to costs and time required for fatigue testing, as well as randomness of rubber materials. In this paper, we describe fatigue life estimation of rubber component using only the results from a relatively simple tearing test. We estimated fatigue life of the Janggu type fatigue specimen and the automotive motor mount, and evaluated reliability of the proposed method by comparing the estimated values with actual test results.