Predicting Fatigue Damage in Interphase of Short Fiber Reinforced Rubber Composites Under Transverse Load

A computational model has been established for analyzing the interphase damage of short fiber reinforced rubber composites (SFRCs) under transverse static and fatigue tensile loads. A cohesive zone model was integrated with a stress-based fatigue damage model to simulate the damage initiation and propagation. To obtain the damage model parameters and validate the methodology, some tests of SFRCs under static and fatigue tensile loads were conducted. The simulation results agree well with the experimental data. It is observed that under static loads, the damage of SFRCs is dominated by the interphase damage before the strain reaches 38.04%. Under fatigue loads, the speed of damage propagation increases exponentially with cyclic numbers. Once the crack in the interphase is initiated, it extends to almost the entire interphase after several cycles because of the stress concentration near the crack tip. It is found that a good initial adhesion status of the interphase can effectively improve the antifatigue performance of SFRCs. (C) 2016 Society of Plastics Engineers