Experimental Study of the Effect of Nanoclay on Fatigue Life of Air Spring

The objective of this work was to investigate the effect of nanocaly on fatigue life of air spring. The studies on the air spring fatigue life have shown that the inner layer of the rubber composite bellows of the air spring plays the most important role on its fatigue life. So, as a new idea to improve the life of the air spring, in this research, NR/BR and 0, 3, 5, 7 % of nanoclay were separately melt-blended. X-ray diffraction was employed to characterize the nanocomposite morphology. Then, the curing time of the unvulcanized compound was defined by rheometer test and the final nanocomposites compounds were provided according to their curing characteristics. After that, tensile, heat built-up, tear and fatigue tests were performed on the standard test specimens. It was shown that by increasing the nanoclay percentage, the elasticity modulus, tear strength and heat built-up were increased whereas tensile strength and elongation at break point were decreased. The results also showed that by the addition of 3 % and 5 % of nanocaly to NR/BR, its fatigue life was increased about 33 % and 57 %, respectively, whereas the fatigue life of the compound containing 7 % nanoclay was decreased about 14 %.