Finite Element Analysis Of Temperature Rise In Rubber Composites Under Cyclic Loading

Rubber composites are widely used in daily life as well as in engineering because of their low stiffness, high elasticity, and significant viscoelasticity. However, such important factors as heat built-up due to the viscoelasticity and hysteresis of rubber composites can cause fatigue failure, directly influencing the service life and structure performance of rubber composite products. Therefore, in order to improve the performance and prolong the service life of rubber composites, it is important to understand the heat built-up property of rubber composites and to analyze the general laws of temperature rise of rubber composites under cyclic loading. Although many researches in the existing literature are devoted to rubber composites, few of them have appropriately described fatigue phenomena from the nature of fatigue. Deep research on the laws for temperature rise during fatigue is crucial to the anti-fatigue design of the structure and the establishment of a fatigue life prediction model.In this paper, finite element method is adopted to establish a two dimensional finite element analysis model, and a numerical simulation program for the temperature field of rubber composites under cyclic loading is developed with ANSYS, and the general law of surface temperature rise of rubber composites under periodic load is obtained. The influence of loading amplitude and loading frequency on the basic hysteretic curve is analyzed with the result that the two factors greatly influence the hysteretic curve. The impact of environmental temperature and thermal conductivity of rubber on temperature rise is studied, and the fitting of the relationship between the utmost temperature rise of rubber composites under cyclic loading and the variation of environmental temperature is presented. The temperature field of rubber composites during cord breakage is simulated. It reveals that temperature increases dramatically with the occurrence of cord breakages. The simulation also investigates the temperature field under two conditions. One considers the temperature hysteresis alone and the other couples temperature hysteresis with cord debonding slip friction. The comparison of the two cases shows debonding slip friction produces less heat. The study is hoped to provide reference for the study of rubber composites performance and structure design of rubber products.