Abstract
The present paper deals with the fatigue crack growth in a carbon black-filled styrene butadiene rubber (CB-SBR) under fully relaxing loading conditions. More precisely, it is devoted to the determination of the scenario of crack growth. For that purpose, an original ‘microcutting’ technique, previously applied by the authors on natural rubber (NR), is used to observe microscopic phenomena involved in fatigue crack growth thanks to scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Results show that the crack tip grows following a tearing line by generating ligaments; it explains the differences between fatigue responses of crystallisable and non-crystallisable rubbers during crack propagation. So, contrary to crystallisable elastomers such as NR, the microstructure of SBR is similar at crack tip and in the bulk material, and the crack tip does not resist crack propagation. Moreover, the morphology of fracture surfaces only depends on particles encountered by the fatigue crack during its propagation.
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