Investigation of mechanical behaviour of continious fiber reinforced cylindirical rubbers under compression by experimental and finite element method

Despite having unique mechanical properties, rubbers are often used in industry in combination with fibre reinforcements due to their low strength. This study aimed to investigate the mechanical behaviour of circumferentially continuous fiber reinforced rubber cylinders under compression load, to determine the effect of fibers on these behaviors by using the finite element method and to verify the finite element results by experiments. In this study, 5 rubber cylinders reinforced by wrapping in horizontal direction and 48 rubber cylinders helically with fibers have different features and were subjected to large deformation with twenty-five percent axial strain and analyzed in the ANSYS Workbench. ANSYS results of rubber specimens reinforced horizontally were verified by experiments. Uniaxial tensile and shear tests were performed to determine the hyperelastic material model required for finite element analysis of rubber materials. The parameters of the 3rd order Yeoh material model determined according to the stress-strain data obtained from the test results gave very close results for the rubber used in the experiments. After experimental verification, helical reinforced rubbers were modeled in ANSYS environment and the effects of helix pitch length, fiber material and fibre diameters on the rubber behaviour were investigated. It was concluded that behaviour of rubber specimens under compression can be controlled using appropriate fibers with finite element analysis.