Three dimensional analysis of fiber reinforced rubber composites in automotive industry by finite element method

Fiber reinforced rubber composites are widely used in automotive industry. They are used as artificial muscles, vehicle tires, air spring systems and fuel pipes. Because of its widely usage, it must be known how they behaves under various loading conditions. Therefore, in this thesis, fiber reinforced rubber composites are studied by using 3D finite element solutions in ANSYS Workbench. For the validations of finite element solutions, some experimental works are carried out. After this validation step, in all finite element solutions, hyperelastic material model is used for rubbers and lineer elastic material model is used for reinforcing fibers. For this aim, five different fiber diameters, five different fiber distances, three different angles and three different fiber materials are used. So, the effect of changes in fiber diameters, fiber distances, angles between fibers and effect of fiber materials are investigated. Obtained results are compared and discussed in details.