Rubber and elastomer simulation specialist Endurica, based in Findlay, Ohio, USA, says it has added a new feature to its Endurica CL fatigue solver: automatic block cycle generation. The feature reportedly enables users to extract a simplified durability testing schedule (known as a block cycle test) from multi-channel road loads recorded on a test track.
The company explains that the simplified testing schedule preserves the most essential features of the original road load history while maintaining the original failure mode and discarding non-critical load history. This, it says, allows suppliers to design fatigue tests that execute quickly and develop realistic damage.
Will Mars, founder and president of Endurica, explained, “We’ve seen some suppliers trying to use fatigue codes written for metals to generate their block cycle schedules. It’s a questionable approach that fails to account for the significant differences between metallic and rubbery behavior.
“Generating a block cycle schedule the old-fashioned way involves too much hand-waving and guesswork. We often hear frustration with block cycle tests that were generated this way. Too often, they change the failure mode of the part so that the lab test fails to match the field test. Our method uses critical plane analysis. It takes into account rubber’s non-linear material properties. It calculates a block cycle schedule that preserves the failure mode of the original. We’ve eliminated the guesswork.”