Innovative vibration technique applied to polyurethane foam as a viable substitute for conventional fatigue testing

AbstractLifetime prediction using three-point bending (TPB) can at times be prohibitively time consuming and costly, whereas vibration testing at higher frequency may potentially save time and revenue. A vibration technique that obtains lifetimes that reasonably match those determined under flexural TPB fatigue is developed. The technique designs the specimen with a procedure based on shape optimization and finite element analysis. When the specimen is vibrated in resonance, a stress pattern that mimics the stress pattern observed under conventional TPB fatigue testing is obtained. The proposed approach was verified with polyurethane foam specimens, resulting in an average error of 4.5% when compared with TPB.