Fatigue Life Prediction of Rubber Isolator Based on Force-Controlled Temperature-Accelerated Fatigue Experiment

摘要

Fatigue life prediction is very important for the reliability and safety design of rubber isolators. As there is still no precise and credible theoretical or simulation method on fatigue life prediction for the kind of rubber isolators whose shape may change with time during the whole useful life, it means that the experimental method is still the best solution for the problem. A force-controlled temperature-accelerated fatigue experiment is designed for these long-life rubber isolators. The experiment introduced essential factors such as the equipment demands, stress condition, data collection and data processing. Compared with the traditional way, there are four advantages of the new experiment: the time cost of the experiment, the authenticity of the experiment data, the quantity of valid data and the control method of the mechanical load. By calculating the real-time vertical displacement, global stiffness and dissipated energy of the tested sample, the new experiment can improve the quantity of valid data for further researches. Moreover, Arrhenius model is proved accurately to estimate the accelerated life.