ABSTRACT
Fatigue analysis methods must account for various effects in rubber that are observed under constant amplitude testing. Crack nucleation and crack growth approaches for analyzing the fatigue behavior of rubber components are complementary paradigms that can be applied depending on analysis objectives. Fatigue crack nucleation refers to the development, under the action of cyclic loading, of one or more cracks in a specimen, from an initial state nominally free of preexisting cracks. Fatigue crack growth refers to the development of cracks under cyclic loading, from an initial state in which the crack of interest is known. A linear crack growth rate prediction model analogous to Miner’s linear damage rule has been proposed to predict the fatigue crack growth rate for variable amplitude signals using constant amplitude crack growth data as the basis for the predictions by Ryan J. Harbour et al.
