A method to obtain probabilistic fatigue lives under varying strain peaks for rubber components with small samples

Abstract Uniaxial tension fatigue experiments are conducted on filled natural rubber (NR) specimens. According to the test data, typical probabilistic distributions under constant strain peak are investigated. Accordingly, a small sample probabilistic fatigue life curve fitting method is proposed, where a Weibull distribution is utilized for the tested rubber. A power‐Weibull statistical model with nonconstant scatter and the conventional group method for complete data are also employed to evaluate the proposed method. It turns out that the slope and intercept relative errors from the small sample fitting method are below 7.86% and 0.943%, respectively, of the complete data methods. It indicates that the proposed method can obtain high‐precision probabilistic fatigue life curves in the case of small samples, which has a certain significance for the efficient test and reliability of rubber fatigue in engineering applications.