Solution Approach:
To finance the project, we contacted the Österreichischen Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft (FFG) and our project "Lifetime prognosis for elastomers" has been approved. This made it possible for us to test new hypotheses, such as those of J. Habenbacher ("Ein durchgängiger Betriebsfestigkeitsnachweis für Schienenfahrzeuge" - TU Graz, dissertation, 2016), for their transferability to service life calculations. The implementation of the critical cutting plane method in our software DACA presented a major challenge in this respect.
Results:
A significantly improved prediction quality of the service life is shown, especially for multi-axial stress conditions. Now complex multi-axial load signals from operational measurements or simulations can be evaluated more exact with regard to damage behaviour. For our customers, elastomer components can thus be designed even more precisely for the planned operational use and thus the risk of failures in real operation can be minimized.
