Damage and Failure Mechanisms in Metal Rubber Materials: A Review

Metal rubber materials are porous metallic structures that combine high elasticity, superior damping, and robust mechanical properties, making them indispensable for vibration isolation and sealing in extreme environments. Under cyclic loading, however, fatigue damage accumulates within the internal wire network and progressively degrades service life and reliability. Because the disordered helical microstructure complicates preparation and characterization, the correlation between the mesostructure and the macroscopic properties remains inadequately understood, forming a critical barrier to reliable fatigue life prediction. To address this gap, this review synthesized the analytical methods for uniaxial and multiaxial fatigue, examined the mechanisms of fretting wear and fretting fatigue in metal wires, and surveyed recent advances in the wear and fatigue studies of metal rubber. Distinguished from previous reviews that treated individual wires or bulk metal rubber separately, this work for the first time traced a complete cross‐scale damage chain from wire‐level fretting to component‐level degradation and life prediction. These findings are expected to provide scientific foundations and practical guidance for optimizing the design and application of metal rubber materials.