Cyclic compressive behavior of polyurethane rubber springs for smart dampers

The main goal of this study is to investigate the hysteretic behavior of polyurethane rubber springs in compression with and without precompression. The precompression is introduced to provide rigid force in the behavior, and thereby a precompressed rubber spring can be used for a restoring element. For the goal, this study prepares nine rubber springs for three suites which are all cylindrical in shape with a hole at the center. The rubber springs in each suite have different dimensions of diameter and length but have similar shape factors; thus, they are designed to have a similar compressive stiffness. Three rubber springs from the nine are tested with increasing compressive strain up to 30% strain to investigate the behavior of the rubber springs without precompression as well as the effect of the loading strain. The nine springs are compressed up to 30% strain with increasing precompressive strain from 0 to 20% at increments of 5%. The study analyzes the effective stiffness and damping ratio of the rubber springs with and without precompression, and the rigid force of the precompressed rubber springs is discussed. Finally, this study suggests a regression method to determine the minimum required precompression to eliminate residual strain after unloading.