On the Study of Fatigue on Vulcanized Rubber Using Vibration Testing

Thanks to the unique properties of high elongation, reversibility, incompressibility, and energy dissipation, rubber materials are employed in numerous engineering applications in industrial practice. The rheological behavior of rubbers depends on chemical composition, presence of additives, and curing process. As a consequence, a large variety of materials may be encountered with a rich phenomenological description of their static and dynamic characteristics. Rate, amplitude, and temperature, among others, are operational parameters that affect rubber’s stiffness and damping properties. On top of that, to ensure the long-term performance and reliability of a rubber component, aging effects and fatigue life assessments are paramount. Existing laboratory vibrational techniques, based on uni-axial displacement-controlled cyclic tests, are capable of extracting storage and loss properties of the rubber under study as a function of frequency and amplitude of the oscillation. This paper investigates the robustness of a transmissibility-based shaker setup for the dynamic characterization of a rubber component extended to long-run operational loading. A preliminary analysis shows the influence of the adhesive substance used to hold the rubber in place in a variety of testing scenarios.