Simulation of self-heating of dynamically loaded elastomer components

Heat generated by internal dissipative processes results in high temperatures within thick-walled rubber components, because of the low heat conductivity of elastomeric materials. However, temperature strongly influences the mechanical properties and is a crucial factor for lifetime and fatigue. It is therefore of vital interest, to predict operating temperatures inside of dynamically loaded elastomer components as well as their mechanical response at operating temperature. We present a method to simulate the stationary temperature distribution within elastomeric components on the basis of a weak coupling of a stationary heat-transfer with a visco-elastic loading analysis. It takes into account the temperature dependency of the material properties on one hand and the inhomogeneous heat generation by visco-elastic dissipation on the other. An iterative scheme is implemented, utilizing ABAQUS as Finite-Element-Solver for the mechanical and thermal problems. The simulation is compared to an analytical solution and the application to an inhomogeneous loading of a rubber component is presented.