ABSTRACT
The material of rubber component for chevron rubber spring was carbon-filled vulcanized natural rubber, which have the hardness of IRHD 60. The rubber material property, which is essential in finite element analysis, is expressed with the coefficient values of strain energy function and these
1 INTRODUCTION
Rubber is one of the most versatile materials widely used in innumerable applications in our day to day life. Perhaps, it would be difficult to quantity the number of applications rubber is used for products which fulfill important functions in almost all areas ranging from simple household, commercial and automotive products to more complex uses in the aviation and space industries. The interest of the useful lifetime evaluation for rubber component was increasing according to the extension of warranty period (Frederick 1982, Lake 1997). A design of rubber component against failure is one of the critical issues to prevent the failures during the operation. Therefore, lifetime prediction and evaluation are technological requirements to assure the safety and reliability of mechanical rubber components (Gant 1992, Takeuchi 1993).
