Estimate the Tearing Energy during Blade Abrasion Using Virtual Crack Closure Technique

The abrasion behaviour of rubber is the principal life determining property for a wide range of different rubber engineering applications such as tyres. Researchers have devoted a lot of effort to understanding these various abrasion mechanisms. Blade abrasion testing was developed in order to use fracture mechanics to predict the abrasion rate. One of the main challenges for blade abrasion study has been to determine the tearing energy. An approximate equation was proposed many years ago, which gave good correlations with the pure shear fatigue test for some rubber compound such as unfilled SBR. Later, the tearing energy was calculated using finite element analysis (FEA). For example, the energy balance technique in FEA were used, which showed closer correlations. In this paper, blade abrasion testing is modelled using a commercial finite element analysis package using a virtual crack closure technique (VCCT) to estimate tearing energy during abrasion. The complexity and potential benefits of using such a modelling technique is discussed.