Fatigue life investigation of rubber bearing for heavy trucks: Optimal design by using finite element method with experimental verification

Rubber bearings consisting of multiple layers of rubber and inlaid steel plates play an important role in cushioning and vibration damping on heavy trucks. In this study, the thermo-mechanical coupling approach together with critical plane analysis theory was utilized to predict fatigue nucleation life of rubber bearing. A new criterion for fatigue life estimation of rubber bearings aiming to eliminate the mesh dependence was proposed, that is, the logarithmic average fatigue life of multiple elements in some local areas with low life (accounting for 0.5% of the total rubber elements) was used instead of the shortest life for a single element. The structure of inlaid steel plates was optimized based on the proposed evaluation criterion for longer service life. The simulation results show that the fatigue life of the optimized rubber bearing is increased by 2.2 times compared with that of the original structure, and the experimental results show that the life of the optimized structure is increased by 2.1 times.