Evaluation Method of Mechanical Properties of Plain-weave Fabric Reinforced Rubber.

Several papers about fiber reinforced rubber have been described by some researchers. However, many of them were about tires or unidirectional fiber reinforced rubber. There are a few researchers who made some theoretical analyses about woven fabric reinforced rubber. In addition, there are few studies about the experiments and the numerical analyses. It is very difficult for woven fabric reinforced rubbers to analyze the mechanical behaviors, because these materials show an anisotropic property and large deformation under tensile load. The fabric reinforced rubbers used for diaphragms and bellows are very soft and flexible, so that the crossing angle of the warp yams and the weft yarns is easy to change when the tensile load in the bias direction is applied. Therefore, it is needed to take the change of crossing angle to simulate the mechanical behaviors under loading condition into consideration. In this paper, we have proposed an evaluation method of mechanical properties of woven fabric reinforced rubber based on the above consideration.