Endurica and Safe Technology Team on Elastomer Fatigue Life Prediction

By DE Editors

Endurica and Safe Technology Limited have partnered to create fe-safe/Rubber, a solution for computer simulation of fatigue failure in elastomers. The solution provides analysts responsible for the durability of elastomeric products with a method that enables them to investigate, at the inception of a design change, the issues that will determine product durability.

Rubber product developers can use the solution to utilize fatigue analysis at the design stage. The technology handles rubbers finite-strain kinematics, hyperelastic stress-strain behavior, strain crystallization, temperature-dependence, and other effects such as ozone attack. These effects have been integrated with procedures such as critical plane analysis, fracture mechanics, and rainflow counting to provide a system capable of accounting for complex duty cycles, including multiaxial loadings and variable amplitudes.

The U.S. Army is using the solution in the development of rubber components in the track system of military ground vehicles.

fe-safe/Rubber is available immediately from Safe Technology as a stand alone product. A fully integrated version of the technology will be available at the end of Q1 2012. fe-safe/Rubber will support all major FEA codes including Abaqus, ANSYS, NASTRAN (MSC, NEi, NX), Pro-M and Ideas.

For more information, visit Endurica and Safe Technology.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.