Prediction of fatigue life of rubber mounts using stress-based damage indexes

Abstract

Prediction of fatigue lives of a rubber mount necessitate formulation of models for estimating fatigue life of the rubber materials used in the mount. Moreover, the prediction accuracy of the model is strongly dependent upon the choice of damage index that are based on different strain, energy or stress measures in the vicinity of critical locations of the rubber mount. In this study, relative performance of models employing different damage indices are evaluated for prediction of fatigue lives of rubber material and a drive-train rubber mount. A combined stress and an effective stress function are proposed as a damage index for predicting fatigue lives of rubber materials and the mounts. Different damage indices, identified from the finite element models of the rubber dumbbell cylindrical specimen are applied for formulations of fatigue life prediction models. The model parameters are identified from the measured data acquired for the rubber dumbbell cylindrical specimen under 31 different uniaxial displacement loads, using least squared error minimization technique. The identified models employing different damage indices are subsequently applied for predicting fatigue lives of rubber mounts under different magnitudes of loads applied along two different directions. The correlations of the predicted lives of the rubber mount from the models employing different damage indices with measured fatigue life data were subsequently investigated for the rubber mount subject to different load conditions. It is shown that the models identified for the rubber material could be effectively used for predicting fatigue lives of the mounts, which are made of same material. The fatigue lives predicted by the models considering either effective stress or combined stress as the damage index correlated with the measured data within a factor of two for the two, suggesting that stress-based damage indices could yield more accurate predictions of fatigue lives of typical mounts.