Section 7

Rubber Properties Static and Dynamic Testing

Rubber Testing is divided into three parts:

1) Material Tests

Such as tensile properties, tear, durometer, rheology, and finite element property tests.

2) Directional Tests

Bushings can have their static rates measured in 4 directions:

1) Radial
2) Axial
3) Torsion
4) Conical

Two more directions are available in Radial and Conical if a voided busing is tested.

Static Rate is Test Load (lbs or N) divided by Test Deflection ( degrees or inches or mm )

Pre-flexing is important to reduce the Mullins effect.

It is important to specify what the desired strain range should be. For the bushings we will be looking at the strain range will be 0.5% to over 100 % depending upon test direction.

Static Rates will vary up to 50 – 60 % depending upon what strain range we are looking at.

3) Product Tests

Such as static rate, dynamic rate and fatigue.

For rubber bushings tested in radial, axial, torsion and coning directions we will review test machines, fixtures, test methods, how to calculate results, and how to correct data for tooling stiffness.

busing radial static rate vs % input strain graph

radial direction complex dynamic stiffness graph

This Section Will Review:

Material properties and their significance.

Static and dynamic properties

This will cover:

1) Directions we can measure and types of test machines used.
2) Test Input Parameters.
3) What data s collected and how it can be analyzed.
4) Sources of test error

Fatigue will be dealt with in Section 9

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