Rubber Fatigue ≠ Metal Fatigue Part 1: Mean Strain Effects

Rubber Fatigue does not equal Metal Fatigue Part 1 Mean Strain Effects
Figure 1. Constant amplitude cycles at three different mean strains.

Rubber and metal are very different materials that exhibit very different behaviors.  Consider the effect of mean strain or stress on the fatigue performance of these materials.  Figure 1 illustrates a few typical constant amplitude strain cycles, each at a different level of mean strain.  If the stress amplitude is equal to the mean stress, we say that we have pulsating tension or fully relaxing tension.  If the mean stress is zero, we say that we have fully reversed tension/compression.  If the minimum stress is always positive, then we have nonrelaxing tension (i.e. always under load).  Nonrelaxing cycles are quite common in applications.  Examples include: pre-loads applied during installation; swaging of a bushing to induce compressive pre-stresses, interference fits, self-stresses occurring due to thermal expansion/contraction; and in tires, shape-memory effects of textile cords.

In metal fatigue analysis, it is customary to define the effect in terms of stress amplitude σa and mean stress σm, relative to the yield stress σy and the ultimate stress σu, as shown in Figure 2.  Below the fatigue threshold stress σ0, indefinite life is predicted. The Haigh (or Goodman)

Figure 2. Haigh diagram (left) and Wohler curves (right) showing mean strain effects on fatigue life for a metal.

diagram (left) maps fatigue life as a function of these parameters [1]. Wohler curves (right) provide similar information.  For metals, a simple rule may be applied universally: increasing mean strain is detrimental fatigue life.  It is also commonly assumed for metals that the critical plane is perpendicular to maximum principal stress direction.

There are many ways that rubber materials differ from metallic materials.  At the atomic scale, rubber is composed of long chain molecules experiencing constant thermal motion while interlinked with a permanent network topology.  This structure permits large, elastic/reversible straining to occur.  Metals could not be more different, existing as individual atoms packed into well-ordered crystals with occasional dislocations or lattice vacancies.  This structure permits only vanishingly small strains before inelastic deformation occurs.  At the meso scale, rubber is typically a composite material containing fillers such as carbon black, silica or clay, as well as other chemical agents.  The mesoscale of a metal is generally described in terms of crystalline grain boundaries and inclusions or voids.  Rubber exhibits many “special effects” that are not seen in metals: rate and temperature dependence, ageing, cyclic softening.  It is unsurprising that analysis methods for rubber differ substantially from those applied for metals.

Rubber’s fatigue performance has a more complex dependence on mean strain. For amorphous (ie non-crystallizing) rubbers, increasing mean strain reduces the fatigue life, as with metals.  But for rubbers that exhibit strain-induced crystallization, mean strain can greatly increase fatigue life, as illustrated in Figure 3.  Fatigue simulations therefore must take account of the strain crystallization effect.

Figure 3. Fatigue tests run in simple tension under constant amplitude show a significant increase in life for Natural Rubber (NR), which strain crystallizes, and a decrease of life for Styrene Butadiene Rubber (SBR) which is amorphous [2].
Mean strain effects are specified in the Endurica fatigue code in terms of fracture mechanical behavior, using the concept of an equivalent fully relaxing tearing energy Teq.  The tearing energy for fully relaxing conditions is said to be equivalent when it produces the same rate of crack growth as the nonrelaxing condition.  For amorphous rubbers, the equivalent R=0 tearing energy Teq is simply the range ΔT of the tearing energy cycle, which can be expressed in terms of the min and max tearing energies Tmin and Tmax, or in terms of R= Tmin / Tmax.  Plugging this rule into the power law crack growth rate function yields the well known Paris law, which predicts faster crack growth for increasing mean strain.  For a strain crystallizing rubber, the equivalent fully relaxing tearing energy can be specified using the Mars-Fatemi law.  In this case, the equivalent fully relaxing tearing energy depends on a function F(R), which specifies the crystallization effect in terms of its influence on the powerlaw slope of the crack growth rate law.  The relationship for amorphous and crystallizing rubbers are summarized in Table 1 [3,4].

Table 1.  Models for computing crack growth rate in amorphous and strain-crystallizing rubbers.

Rubber’s fatigue behavior may be plotted in a Haigh diagram, but the contours can be quite different than for metals.  In metal fatigue analysis, it is assumed that cracks always develop perpendicular to the max principal stress direction. This is not always true for rubber, especially in cases involving strain crystallization and nonrelaxing loads.  For rubber fatigue analysis it is therefore required to use critical plane analysis [5], in which fatigue life is computed for many potential crack orientations, and in which the crack plane with the shortest life is identified as the most critical plane.  Figure 4 shows the dependence of the fatigue life and the critical plane orientation on strain amplitude and mean strain.  A sphere is plotted for each pair of strain amplitude and mean strain coordinates, on which the colors represent fatigue life, and unit normal vectors indicate critical plane orientations.  It can be seen that different combinations of mean strain and strain amplitude can produce a range of crack plane orientations.

Figure 4. Critical plane analysis consists in integrating the crack growth rate law for every possible crack orientation, and identifying the orientation that produces the shortest life (left). Each point in the Haigh diagram (right) is associated with its own critical plane orientation.

The Haigh diagrams for natural rubber (NR) and for styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) are shown in Figure 5.  In these images, red represents short fatigue life, and blue long life.  For natural rubber (on the left), the long-life region of the Haigh diagram exhibits a notable dome-like shape, indicative of a beneficial effect of mean strain under the influence of strain-induced crystallization. In contrast, SBR always exhibits decreased fatigue life as mean strain increases.  Even so, the Haigh diagram for SBR has a nonlinear character associated with the material’s hyperelasticity that is also distinct from a metal.

Figure 5. Haigh diagrams computed for NR (left) and for SBR (right) rubbers.

It should be noted that the strain crystallization effect in rubber depends on temperature.  At colder temperatures, the effect is stronger, and at higher temperatures it is weaker.  Figure 6 compares experimental Haigh diagrams [6] (top) for a crystallizing rubber to computed results (bottom) for three temperatures.

Figure 6. Experimental Haigh diagram [6] for natural rubber at 3 temperatures (top), compared to computed Haigh diagram (bottom). Increasing temperature tends to reduce the beneficial effect of strain crystallization.
In summary, while tensile mean stresses are always detrimental in metals, in rubber they may be either beneficial or harmful, depending on whether the rubber can strain crystallize. The benefits of mean stresses in rubber can be quite strong – sometimes amounting to more than several orders of magnitude. The beneficial effect is stronger at colder temperatures and is reduced at higher temperatures.  Critical Plane Analysis is essential for accurately predicting the effects of strain crystallization in rubber.  Wohler curves, commonly used for metal fatigue analysis, incorrectly assume that the worst-case plane is always normal to the max principal stress direction.  This is not an accurate approach for strain crystallizing rubber under mean strain.  Use the Endurica fatigue solvers to accurately capture these effects when its important to get durability right!

References

[1] Stephens, R. I., Fatemi, A., Stephens, R. R., & Fuchs, H. O. (2000). Metal fatigue in engineering. John Wiley & Sons.

[2] Ramachandran, Anantharaman, Ross P. Wietharn, Sunil I. Mathew, W. V. Mars, and M. A. Bauman.  (2017) “Critical plane selection under nonrelaxing simple tension with strain crystallization.” In Fall 192nd technical meeting of the ACS Rubber Division, pp. 10-12.

[3] Mars, W. V. (2009). Computed dependence of rubber’s fatigue behavior on strain crystallization. Rubber Chemistry and Technology82(1), 51-61.

[4] Harbour, Ryan J., Ali Fatemi, and Will V. Mars. “Fatigue crack growth of filled rubber under constant and variable amplitude loading conditions.” Fatigue & Fracture of Engineering Materials & Structures 30, no. 7 (2007): 640-652.

[5] Mars, W. V. (2021). Critical Plane Analysis of Rubber. Fatigue Crack Growth in Rubber Materials: Experiments and Modelling, 85-107.

[6] Ruellan, Benoît, J-B. Le Cam, I. Jeanneau, F. Canévet, F. Mortier, and Eric Robin. “Fatigue of natural rubber under different temperatures.” International Journal of Fatigue 124 (2019): 544-557.

 

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Behind the Scenes Tour of Endurica Software Development and QA Practices

Ever wonder what it takes to consistently deliver quality and reliability in our software releases?  Here’s a brief overview of the systems and disciplines we use to ensure that our users receive timely, trouble-free updates of Endurica software.

Automation:

Throughout the life of our software, changes are made to our source code for a variety of reasons.  Most commonly, we are adding new features and capabilities to our software.  We also make updates to the code to improve performance and to squash the inevitable bugs that occasionally occur.

With each change committed to the code repository, the software needs to be built, tested, and released.  Endurica’s workflow automates these steps so that any change to the source repository triggers a clean build of the software.  A successful build is automatically followed by a testing phase where our suite of benchmarks is executed and compared to known results.  Finally, the build is automatically packaged and stored so that it is ready to be delivered.  At each step along the way, a build error or failed test will cancel the workflow and send an alert warning that the release has been rejected, so that the issue can be addressed, and the workflow restarted.

Endurica's build and testing process ensures that high quality standards are met for every new release. Black arrow: normal flow, Red arrow: an error or failed test
Figure 1: Endurica’s build and testing process ensures that high quality standards are met for every new release. Black arrow: normal flow, Red arrow: an error or failed test.

Reliability:

The automated testing phase that every release goes through helps ensure the reliability of our software.  For example, every Endurica CL release must pass all 70 benchmarks.  Each benchmark is a separate Endurica CL analysis made up of different materials, histories, and output requests.  Results from a new build are compared to known results from the previous successful build.  If results do not agree, or if there are any errors, the benchmark does not pass and the build is rejected.

The testing phase prevents “would-be” bugs from making it into a release and makes sure that any issues get resolved.

Repeatability:

The automated nature of our development workflow naturally helps with repeatability in our releases.  Each build flows through the same pipeline, creating consistent releases every time.  There is less worry, for example, that a component will be forgotten to be included.  It also allows us to recreate previous versions if comparisons need to be made.

Traceability:

Our version control system enables us to easily pinpoint where and when prior changes were introduced into the software.  Each release is tied to a commit in the repository. This allows any future issues to be easily traced back and isolated to a small set of changes in the source for quick resolution.

Responsiveness:

Automating the build and release pipelines greatly increases our responsiveness.  If an issue is discovered in a release, the problem can be resolved, and a fully corrected and tested release can be made available the same day.  We can also quickly respond to user feedback and suggestions by making small and frequent updates.

The systems and disciplines we use in our development process make us very efficient, and they protect against many errors. This means we can spend more of our time on what matters: delivering and improving software that meets high standards and helps you to get durability right.

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Top 10 Reasons to Celebrate Endurica’s 10-Year Anniversary

Endurica | Get Durability Right | 10 YearsIn considering ways to capture the contributions and essence of Endurica LLC to celebrate its tenth year of existence – and educating myself some more about the company I joined a little more than a year ago – I decided to put together the following top 10 list.  Enjoy this informative snapshot of Endurica.

10 years of providing software and testing solutions for elastomer applications to #GetDurabilityRight in automotive, tire, aerospace, sealing, defense, consumer products, energy, and medical industries.

9 countries are using Endurica’s elastomer fatigue analysis software products (Endurica CL™, fe-safe/Rubber™, Endurica DT™, and Endurica EIE™) for finite element analysis (FEA).

8 specialized elastomer characterization modules are available in our Fatigue Property Mapping testing services.

7 years ago, the first training course was offered by Endurica. Today there are three courses that are each taught multiple times around the world every year.

6 is the number of full-time teammates working at Endurica LLC.

5 types of integrated durability solutions are offered by Endurica: FEA software, material characterization services, testing instruments, training, and consulting.

4 patents for Endurica’s innovative technology (3 granted plus 1 pending application). 

3 testing instruments are available in the Americas region through our partnership with Coesfeld GmbH & Co. KG (Germany).

2 members of the Endurica team received the Sparks-Thomas Award from the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society for outstanding contributions and innovations in the field of elastomers.

1st (and only) commercial FEA software to predict when and where cracks will show up in an elastomer product with complex loading and geometry for users of Abaqus™, ANSYS™, and MSC Marc™.

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Durability Simulation and the Value of Product Development Resources

Durability Simulation | Endurica

What value does your company gain by deploying product development resources one way vs. another when it comes to durability?

R&D organizations are built around what it takes to get the product into production.  The costs of the organization include wages for the engineers and technicians, the costs of the capital equipment used in development and testing, and the overhead from administrative functions.  These are all fixed costs, and in the rubber industry it is typical to see R&D budgets that amount to somewhere between 1% and 5% of sales.

The R&D program lifecycle is iterative.  It goes something like this: design, build, test, qualify for production, launch product.  A quick way to understand product development costs is to look at how long it takes for one design-build-test-launch iteration.  If it takes your tech center one year per iteration, then the cost of one pass through the cycle is something like (company annual sales) x (R&D rate per annual sales)/(number of parallel development programs executing at a given time in your tech center).  For a $2B company with a 2.5% research budget and 10 development programs in the works, this works out to $5M/iteration.

An overview of cost distribution using the build and break method

How much of this cost is burned on durability issues?  Potentially all of it, at least within any one given iteration.  At worst, a non-qualifying test result leads to a “back to the drawing board” restart of the iteration.  The durability tests required for qualification can only be made after the prototype is in hand, so a restart means the whole team ends up revisiting and reproducing to correct a failed iteration.  Over the long run, if your iteration failure rate is 1 in 5 iterations (20%), that means you are burning $5M x 20% = $1M per product.

How much of this cost can realistically be avoided?  The big opportunity lies in the fact that the old “build and break” paradigm does not immediately hold accountable design decisions that lead to poor durability, and it does not have enough band-width to allow for much optimization.  A “build and break” only plan is a plan for business failure.  Poor decisions are only tested and caught after big investments in the iteration have all become sunk costs.  The advent of simulation has fueled a new “right the first time” movement that empowers the engineer to very rapidly investigate and understand how alternative materials, alternative geometries, or alternative duty cycles impact durability.  The number of alternatives that can be evaluated and optimized by an analyst before committing other resources is many times greater.  “Right the first time” via simulation is a model that is increasingly favored by OEMs and suppliers because it works.  Expect to halve your iteration failure rate.

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Tire Society 2017 – Best Question

Best Question Answer | 56.8 C - Peak temperature | N = 3.8E7 cycles = 131E3 km Cycles to 1 mm Crack

Every year, the top minds from academia, government and industry gather in Akron to share their work at the Tire Society annual meeting, and to enjoy a few moments of professional camaraderie.  Then we all return to fight for another year in the trenches of the technology wars of our employers.

This year, the meeting offered the latest on perennial themes: modal analysis, traction, materials science, noise, simulation, wear, experimental techniques for material characterization and for model validation.  Too much to summarize with any depth in a blog post.  If you are interested, you should definitely resolve to go next year.  Endurica presented two papers this year.

I presented a demonstration of how the Endurica CL fatigue solver can account for the effects of self-heating on durability in a rolling tire.  Endurica CL computes dissipation using a simple microsphere model that is compatible, in terms of discretization of the shared microsphere search/integration domain, with the critical plane search used for fatigue analysis.  In addition to defining dissipative properties of the rubber, the user defines the temperature sensitivity of the fatigue crack growth rate law when setting up the tire analysis.  In the case considered, a 57 degC temperature rise was estimated, which decreased the fatigue life of the belt edge by a factor of nearly two, relative to the life at 23 degC.  The failure mode was predicted at the belt edges.  For 100% rated load, straight ahead rolling, the tire was computed to have a life of 131000 km.

The best audience question was theoretical in nature: are the dissipation rates and fatigue lives computed by Endurica objective under a coordinate system change?  And how do we know?  The short answer is that the microsphere / critical plane algorithm, properly implemented, guarantees objectivity.  It is a simple matter to test: we can compute the dissipation and fatigue life for the same strain history reported in two different coordinate systems.  The dissipation rate and the fatigue life should not depend on which coordinate system is used to give the strain history.

For the record, I give here the full Endurica input (PCO.hfi) and output (PCO.hfo) files for our objectivity benchmark.  In this benchmark, histories 11 and 12 give the same simple tension loading history in two different coordinate systems.  Likewise, 21 and 22 give a planar tension history in two coordinate systems.  Finally, 31 and 32 give a biaxial tension history in two coordinate systems.  Note that all of the strain histories are defined in the **HISTORY section of the .hfi file.  In all cases, the strains are given as 6 components of the nominal strain tensor, in the order 11, 22, 33, 12, 23, 31.  The shear strains are given as engineering shear components, not tensor (2*tensor shear = engineering shear).

The objectivity test is successful in all cases because, as shown in the output file PCO.hfo, both the fatigue life, and the hysteresis, show the same values under a coordinate system change.  Quod Erat Demonstrondum.

ObjectivityTable

the full Endurica input (PCO.hfi) and output (PCO.hfo) files for the objectivity benchmark

 

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