Long-term life prediction of polyacrylate rubber (ACM) gasket with chlorine cure sites using the four-parameter recovery model

Abstract

Rubber-like materials are widely used in many fields and are often installed in various mechanical systems. These materials are used as dampers, oil sealing gaskets and other important automotive parts. In the design of rubber-like materials, engineers consider the lifetime, the durability and the reliability. The lifetime prediction of rubber material is very important in the design process; however, it is difficult to predict the lifetime of rubber materials because of changing properties under complex operational environments such as the temperature, the humidity and the vibration and because of long-time consumption. The highly accelerated life test is generally used to predict the long-term lifetime of rubber materials. We conducted compression set tests with polyacrylate (ACM) rubber gasket material and regressed the experimental data with several models using a successive zooming genetic algorithm. We compared the regressed recovery curves of the single-parameter model, the two-parameter model and the four-parameter model in terms of the mean squared error. Finally, using the Arrhenius equation, we predicted the quantitative long-term lives for a rubber gasket made of polyacrylate (ACM) rubber with chlorine cure sites at lower temperatures.