Multiaxial fatigue prediction on crack initiation for rubber antivibration design – Location and orientation with stress ranges

Abstract

In antivibration applications, it is essential that the given rubber product has a suitable service period; therefore, an accurate fatigue assessment during design is key. In this study, the effective stress approach was applied to two industrial products: a drum mount for road engineering and a Metacone spring for rail vehicles. This method employed a three-dimensional tensor that took all principal stress ranges into consideration, without underestimating fatigue damage, in a multi-axial stress state. As both the magnitude and direction of the effective stress were obtained based on analytical functions, there was no need to use the expensive critical plane search method to detect the plane of failure. The calculated angles (67.5° and −63.2° from the horizontal plane, respectively) were validated against the observed fatigue cracks. Engineers would be able to accelerate their design processes by using the approach presented in the current study, due mainly to three aspects: visualising all of the whole product's hot spots, circumventing an expensive critical plane search, and presenting the effective stress ranges. As the proposed effective stress approach was validated in only two specific industrial cases, an investigation into further engineering applications is still needed to lend this concept greater support.