ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Fatigue of industrial elastomers is an important direction of research. In this context, the most widely used approach in both academic and industrial research is fatigue life testing. In most studies, the experimental procedure considers a prescribed constant cyclic displacement. Currently, the relation between the prescribed displacement and stress/strain is derived assuming mostly elastic behavior. However, limitations arise when the elastomer exhibits strong inelastic behavior; the mechanical state parameters of the material, i.e. stress and/or strain, do not remain constant throughout the duration of the displacement-controlled experiment. The present work, firstly, states the limitations of conventional approaches. Then, a new experimental procedure based on true stress control is presented for fatigue testing, which alleviates some of the issues associated with conventional methods and leads to creation of a Wöhler curve for elastomers. Additionally, the procedure is extended for simultaneous parallel testing of several specimens for time efficiency and greater statistical significance.
