ABSTRACT
Rubber is a high non-linear elastic material. Rubber-to-metal bonded springs are widely used in industry as anti-vibration components giving many years of service. This type of anti-vibration unit (180 × 150 × 110), investigated here, consists of metal plates bonded with rubber through a moulding process as a core and an outside metal case. The unit is designed to control vertical, lateral and longitudinal movements. The component is normally loaded in shear and compression and providing three linear modes of flexibility. Figure 1 shows the prototype of the component and a quarter of the finite element model. This type of rubber spring is designed to have much more wider applications under different loading modes, compared with standard components. Hence it causes many difficulties in the unit assembly. The success of the design depends on the success of the assembly stage. The work reported here is to evaluate the assembly stage which may need additional compression equipment to complete. Without this step, previous procedures [1-3] cannot be carried out to meet the stress and/or fatigue requirement.
