Microscopic mechanism of multiaxial fatigue of vulcanised natural rubber

Abstract

Fatigue tests were conducted on two kinds of vulcanised natural rubber with different formulas under uniaxial and multiaxial loading. The results reveal that interfacial adhesion of material A is better, and compared with material B, fatigue life of material A is longer. Under the same engineering strain amplitude, lower fatigue life under tension-torsion non-proportional loading is due to the increase in total hysteresis energy in the torsional direction. Scanning electron microscopy analysis showed that fatigue failure is related to ligaments breakage for material B, while cavitation induced by the decohesion between zinc oxides and rubber matrix is the main cause of the fatigue damage for material A.

Mechanical properties of cerium oxide-modified vulcanised natural rubber at elevated temperature

“…Natural rubber (NR) is a durable and flexible material which has been widely applied to fabricate the automobile tires, vibration isolators, seals and gaskets [1][2][3]. It is known that the rare earth (RE) has a large quantity of empty orbits due to the electron shell structure.…”

Fatigue crack growth dynamics in filled natural rubber

“…Although there is a good knowledge of factors that can affect the fatigue life of rubbers, [1][2][3][4][5] crack propagation in filled rubbers is still not well understood. 6 In filled elastomers, rupture dynamics is a much more complex process than in pure elastomers due to the intrinsic heterogeneous mixture of a rubber matrix with filler particles at submicronic scale.…”

Fatigue of vulcanized natural rubber under proportional and non‐proportional loading

“…Wang et al 30,31 carried out fatigue tests on vulcanized NR under uniaxial and multiaxial loads. The fatigue life under the non‐proportional loading path was shorter than that under the uniaxial loading path with identical amplitude of equal effect, and there was an obvious non‐proportional additional cyclic softening phenomenon in the loading process.…”