Research Progress on Fatigue Life of Rubber Materials

Rubber products will be fatigued when subjected to alternating loads, and working in harsh environments will worsen the fatigue performance, which will directly affect the service life of such products. Environmental factors have a great influence on rubber materials, including temperature, humidity, ozone, etc., all of which will affect rubber’s properties and among which temperature is the most important. Different rubber materials have different sensitivity to the environment, and at the same time, their own structures are different, and their bonding degree with fillers is also different, so their fatigue lives are also different. Therefore, there are generally two methods to study the fatigue life of rubber materials, namely the crack initiation method and the crack propagation method. In this paper, the research status of rubber fatigue is summarized from three aspects: research methods of rubber fatigue, factors affecting fatigue life and crack section. The effects of mechanical conditions, rubber composition and environmental factors on rubber fatigue are expounded in detail. The section of rubber fatigue cracking is expounded from macroscopic and microscopic perspectives, and a future development direction is given in order to provide reference for the research and analysis of rubber fatigue and rubber service life maximization.