Useful lifetime prediction of rubber component

Rubber material properties and lifetime evaluation are very important in design procedure to assure the safety and reliability of the rubber components. This paper discusses the failure mechanism and material tests were carried out to predict the useful lifetime of NBR and EPDM for compression motor, which is used in refrigerator component. The heat-aging process leads not only to mechanical properties change but also to chemical structure change so called degradation. In order to investigate the heat-aging effects on the material properties, the accelerated test were carried out. The stress-strain curves were plotted from the results of the tensile test for virgin and heat-aged rubber specimens. The rubber specimens were heat-aged in an oven at the temperature ranging from 70 degrees C to 100 degrees C for a period from 1 to 180 days. Compression set results changes as the threshold are used for assessment of the useful life and time to threshold value were plotted against reciprocal of absolute temperature to give the Arrhenius plot. By using the compression set test, several useful life prediction equations for rubber material were proposed. Significance: Useful lifetime estimation procedure employed in this study could be used approximately for the design of the rubber components at the early design stage. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.