SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF POLYMER CORD REINFORCED RUBBER UNDER TENSILE AND COMPRESSIVE LOADS

The facts that rubber owns high elasticity and that cord is a structure consisting of several twisted bundles of filaments lead to the situation that the polymer cord reinforced rubber (PCRR) possesses peculiar characteristics different from those of general composite materials. Within this paper based on a large number of experimental results the main static properties of PCRR are discussed. These properties enclose the nonlinearity, the different deformation behaviour in tension and compression, the dependence on temperature, the peculiar buckling characteristics, the quasi-yield phenomenon etc. All these special features prove that the basic concept of general mechanics of composite materials cannot be valid for PCRR.