A method for modelling of fatigue life for rubbers and rubber isolators

A method for modelling fatigue life of rubbers and rubber isolators is presented in this paper. Firstly, a fatigue experiment is carried out for a rubber dumbbell cylindrical specimen and a rubber isolator. Based on the finite element analysis, the damage parameters including the strain energy density, the maximum principal Green–Lagrange strain and the effective stress are calculated and discussed. Secondly, three fatigue life prediction models are established by using the three damage parameters and using the relation between the measured fatigue life of a dumbbell cylindrical specimen and the computed value of the damage parameters. Thirdly, three proposed prediction models are used to investigate which one can be best used to predicting fatigue life of rubber isolators, taking a typical powertrain rubber isolator as studying example. The fatigue lives of the rubber isolator predicted by the three models are compared with the experimental life. The results demonstrate that the predicted fatigue lives of the rubber isolator using the three fatigue models agree well with the experimental fatigue life within a factor of four, and the model using the effective stress as the damage parameter can predict the fatigue life within a factor of two, which has the best accuracy among the three models.