Strain-based criterion for uniaxial fatigue life prediction for an SBR rubber: Comparative study and development

This work proposes an engineering approach to investigate the fatigue lifetime of styrene-butadiene rubber under uniaxial loadings. Two specimen geometries are considered: axisymmetric sample AE2 and diablo sample AE42. Specimens are cycled with a sinusoidal waveform at 5 Hz for different maximum displacement values and a zero load ratio. The various damage parameters, commonly used for fatigue life calculation, are reviewed and discussed. Then fatigue models with diverse damage parameters are generated from the fatigue lives experimentally observed for specimen AE2. The efficiency of each predictive model is evaluated in terms of coefficient of determination R-2. It is shown that all the studied damage parameters allow excellent fatigue-life estimations with R-2 greater than 0.9. A nonlinear finite element analysis model using ABAQUS software for specimen AE42 is then set up. It is found that the model developed for specimen AE2 is appropriate to estimate the fatigue life time of AE42. Indeed, the obtained fatigue live predictions are in excellent agreement with the experimental fatigue results.