Prediction of actual fatigue test temperature and isothermal fatigue life curves for non-crystallising rubber under fully relaxing uni-axial loading conditions

The time to complete fatigue tests can be rather long, especially with high cycle fatigue. Increasing frequency in fatigue tests decreases the time needed to complete material characterisation. For rubber materials, considerable internal heat generation and relatively low thermal conductivity causes temperature rises that can greatly reduce fatigue lifetime. Based on both experimental tests under fully relaxing uni-axial loading conditions on a non-crystallising rubber compound and numerical simulations, a method for estimating test temperature and isothermal fatigue life curves is presented. The results of the comparison between measured and estimated surface temperature of the specimen show that the maximum estimation error is below 10 %.