Journal Papers Published by the Rubber Research Group

"Fatigue peeling of rubber"

Author(s): T.L.M. Baumard, A.G. Thomas and J.J.C. Busfield

Journal: Constitutive Models for Rubber VII edited by S. Jerrams and N. Murphy

A fatigue peeling test has been developed to evaluate the failure of rubber to rubber interfaces under cyclic loading. The test specimen has legs wider than the contact width between the two layers being unpeeled. Results obtained through this method have been compared to those of a typical fatigue crack growth experiment. Both measurements are shown over a wide range of peeling or tearing energies and the results shown that the trends in behavior between these two failure modes are similar with the peeling necessary to drive the crack being slightly higher than the tearing energy at the same crack growth rate. This is probably due to higher energy dissipation as a result of crack tip blunting due to a wider peel interface being present in the peel specimen. Cyclic and time dependent contributions to the fatigue crack growth behavior have been calculated using this test for an SBR compound and the results appear to be consistent with previous work.