ABSTRACT
After the description of the experimental set-up and methods, the different results are discussed, in order to solve the question of the influence of SIC
1 INTRODUCTION
The impressive resistance of Natural Rubber (NR) to fatigue crack growth as compared to others synthetic rubbers, has been reported by many authors (Lake & Lindley 1965, Lake 1995, Mars & Fatemi 2004). The Strain-Induced Crystallization (SIC) phenomenon, that takes place in particular in the neighbourhood of a crack tip (Lee & Donovan 1987, Trabelsi et al. 2002) because of large strains in this region, is believed to play a major role and to slow down the crack propagation during fatigue tests (Mars & Fatemi 2003, Mars & Fatemi 2004, Saintier et al. 2010). However, the influence of the crystallized zone at crack tip on the crack propagation in fatigue remains unproven today.
