Fatigue Life Modeling & Simulation of Elastomer-Polymer Materials

Because of their macromolecular structure, elastomers exhibit unique behavior and require special-purpose modeling and simulation methods. Endurica has developed a patented system for the simulation of fatigue life in elastomeric materials. The fatigue life is the number of cycles that a material will tolerate before developing a crack of specified size. The analysis system embodies 10 man-years of development, and its author has received numerous awards for the work. We propose to address the subject SBIR Phase I feasibility study by applying our simulation system to a series of tasks selected to demonstrate its underlying principles and operability. The tasks will be developed around the following main themes: 1) material model definition, 2) analysis of the multiaxial, variable amplitude duty cycle occurring at a single material point, and 3) simulation of crack nucleation in a rubber component simulated via finite elements. The proposal includes the option to further demonstrate workflow feasibility by experimentally characterizing two materials following our analysis schema.