Fatigue life prediction and optimum topology design of EPDM weather strip

One of the major performances required for weather strip is the high durability against the frequent opening and closing operations of automobile door. In this paper, the fatigue life of automobile weather strip manufactured with EPDM rubber is predicted by making use of the nonlinear finite element analysis and an ε–N curve of EPDM rubber. Furthermore, for the sake of the fatigue life enhancement, the local region within the weather strip cross-section which is vulnerable to the fatigue failure is designed by means of a density-based topology optimization method. Through the numerical experiments, it is confirmed that the topologically optimized weather strips show fatigue lives much longer than the initial weather strip design.