Fatigue Properties of Steel Cord-Rubber Composite

Abstract

The fatigue properties of [±20°] steel cord-rubber laminated composite under tension-tension (T-T) loading are studied in this paper. The results show that the variation of the cycle strain in the fatigue process under the constant cycle loading exhibits three stages which correspond to damage initiation, steady damage propagation and catastrophic failure. Two-step experiments demonstrate that the strain variation in step-2 generally follows the similar regularity, indicating that the three-stage behavior also exists in that of the defected specimens. The S-N data in the fatigue-life diagram follow a linear trend. Studies on the effect of the frequency on the fatigue properties show that the higher the frequency of loading, the faster the cycle strain increases and the shorter the fatigue life is. The hysteretic loss caused by the viscoelasticity of the constituent materials remains constant during the steady propagation stage of the damage. Both the surface temperature and its increasing rate go up as the maximum stress and the frequency increase.