CANCELLED: Definition and Experimental Validation of a New Model for the Fatigue of Elastomers Incorporating Deviations From Miner's Linear Law of Cumulative Damage

Deviations from Miner’s linear law of cumulative damage have been observed and modeled many times for the fatigue of metals. But almost no studies of this kind have been performed  for elastomers. The first aim of this paper is to test this cumulative damage rule on rubber. A series of uniaxial fatigue experiments have been carried out on “diabolo” specimens made of two different elastomers and subjected to two different successive cyclic loadings. The results obtained show many discrepancies with Miner’s cumulative damage law predictions. It is observed that Miner’s “total cumulated damage” may be lower or larger than unity by a small or large amount, depending on the sequence of loadings and the type of material. Also, the deviation from Miner’s rule systematically changes sign upon reversal of the sequence of loadings.

The second aim is therefore to present a phenomenological model able to quantitatively reproduce such deviations. This model is based on continuum damage mechanics; it relates the fatigue damage of the material to the number of cycles through some evolution law in which the derivative of damage is expressed as a non-factorizable function of the instantaneous amplitude of loading and the damage itself. This model allows for a good reproduction of the experimental results, and especially of the change of sign of the deviation from Miner’s rule upon reversal of the sequence of loadings.