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In rubber products design finite element analysis is a widely used technique. In many cases, the pre-defined operating conditions can be achieved by changing the geometric dimensions of the product which is the well-known iterative design method. Using more than one design parameter the number of possible combinations will increase significantly. The application of Support Vector Machine (SVM) can handle the large number of data in a special way and helps to find the optimal design parameters. In this paper an optimization process of a rubber jounce is presented using nonlinear finite element analysis and SVM.

In rubber product design finite element analysis is widely used. The aim of this research is to choose the appropriate material models and to determine the related material parameters for finite element analysis of a rubber jounce. Rubber products can suffer from large deformation upon working conditions while behaving as a non-linearly elastic, isotropic and incompressible material. Hyperelastic material models accurately describe the observed material behaviour. Uniaxial compression test of rubber specimen has been performed to determine the stress-strain curve. Using test data and ANSYS for curve fitting process, the material constants for Mooney-Rivlin and Yeoh model have been established. Finite element analysis of the compression test has been made to validate the specified material constants. It can be stated that three term Yeoh model showed better agreement with the test data than the one term formula. Two term Mooney-Rivlin model showed good match with the measurement data, thereby it is also recommended for the future investigations of rubber jounce.