This paper presents an experimental evaluation of the stress relaxation and creep of filled rubber. A detailed study of the influence of different test programs, where the main variable was the load sequence on the creep and relaxation processes, is discussed. The final goal of the research is to find a method to predict stress relaxation from known creep, or vice versa, in a simple way that would give sufficiently accurate results over both primary and secondary creep regions. Therefore suggestion for converting the creep test result into a stress relaxation curve and vice versa is presented. The idea is based on the assumption that both processes (creep and stress relaxation) are the result of the same viscoelastic mechanism and that the stress relaxation can be treated as creep under decreasing stress. Experimental data shows these assumptions to be correct. For the conversion of the creep parameters into stress relaxation parameters a reverse stress-strain curve is needed, therefore factors affecting the unloading stress-strain curve are also presented. Finally, the transition from the suggested conversion to the final method will be discussed.
COBISS.SI-ID: 13429019
A damage operator approach for random non-isothermal loading is demonstrated in this paper. The approach is then used to predict the damage of a thermomechanically loaded exhaust muffler. Material properties of the basic material and the weld have been treated separately. The results from thermal and structural analyses using FEA have been applied to the exhaust muffler in LMS Virtual.Lab and both fatigue and creep damages predicted. Tested exhaust mufflers were then subjected to the same loading conditions as in the calculation, and load cycles were repeated up to the point of failure or 2 million cycles. Simulated and test results are comparable.
COBISS.SI-ID: 13429275
In the event of a crash involving a car, its seats, together with their backrests and head supports, ensure the safety of the passengers. The filling material used for such a car seat is normally made of polyurethane foam. To simulate the behaviour of the seat assembly during a crash, the material characteristics of the seat-filling foam should be appropriately modelled. The paper aims to present a method, with which the proper parameter values of the selected material model for the seat-filling foam can be easily determined. In the study, an experiment with the specimen from seat-filling foam was carried out. The results from this experiment were the basis for the determination of the parameter values of the low-density-foam material model, which is often used in crash-test simulations. Two different numerical optimisation algorithms - a genetic algorithm and a gradient-descent algorithm - were coupled with LS-DYNA explicit simulations to identify the material parameters. The paper provides comparison of two optimisation algorithms and discusses the engineering applicability of the results. This paper presents an approach for the identification of the missing parameter values of the highly non-linear material model, if these cannot be easily determined directly from experimental data.
COBISS.SI-ID: 13681947
This study focuses on an evaluation of the significance of the fatigue-life reduction due to macro-porosity present in pressure-die-casted aluminium specimens. Three statistical models, i.e., univariate analysis of variance, multivariate analysis of variance and linear regression with dummy variables, were applied to test the statistical significance of the fatigue-life reduction. The three statistical models were applied for the case of experimentally determined fatigue-life data for an AlSi9Cu3 alloy with different levels of macro-porosity. Cylindrical specimens according to ASTM E606 were manufactured by pressure die casting using different manufacturing parameters (die pressure, die temperature) to artificially introduce detectable macro-pores into the specimens. The manufactured specimens were classified into three groups, representing their levels of porosity, which were identified based on x-ray images of the specimens. For each group, strain-controlled fatigue tests were performed at different strain levels. Of these approaches, linear regression with dummy variables proved to be the most appropriate, due to its ability to robustly identify the differences between the fatigue lives for different porosity levels.
COBISS.SI-ID: 13510939
We present the main features of CITIUS, a new light source for ultrafast science, generating tunable, intense, femtosecond pulses in the spectral range from infrared to extreme ultraviolet (XUV). The XUV pulses (about 105-108 photons/pulse in the range 14-80 eV) are produced by laser-induced high-order harmonic generation in gas. This radiation is monochromatized by a time-preserving monochromator, also allowing one to work with high-resolution bandwidth selection. The tunable IR-UV pulses (1012-1015 photons/pulse in the range 0.4-5.6 eV) are generated by an optical parametric amplifier, which is driven by a fraction of the same laser pulse that generates high order harmonics. The IR-UV and XUV pulses follow different optical paths and are eventually recombined on the sample for pump-probe experiments. We also present the results of two pump-probe experiments: with the first one, we fully characterized the temporal duration of harmonic pulses in the time-preserving configuration; with the second one, we demonstrated the possibility of using CITIUS for selective investigation of the ultra-fast dynamics of different elements in a magnetic compound.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3223291