Characteristic Tearing Energy and Fatigue Crack Propagation of Filled Natural Rubber

Below the incipient characteristic tearing energy (T-0), cracks will not grow in rubber under fatigue loading. Hence, determination of the characteristic tearing energy T-0 is very important in the rubber industry. A rubber cutting experiment was conducted to determine the T-0, using the cutting method proposed originally by Lake and Yeoh. Then, a fatigue crack propagation experiment on a edge-notched pure shear specimen under variable amplitude loading was studied. A method to obtain the crack propagation rate da/dN from the relationship of the crack propagation length (& UDelta;a) with the number of cycles (N) is proposed. Finally, the T-0 obtained from the cutting method is compared with the value decided by the fatigue crack propagation experiment. The values of T-0 obtained from the two different methods are a little different.

Automated summary

The study focused on determining the characteristic tearing energy and crack propagation rate in rubber through different experiments, yielding slightly different results.