In many components that contain elastomeric elements, it can be difficult to inspect parts because of their installation location and/or their assembly layout. In particular, in configurations where layers of elastomeric material are arranged between shims or partitions and/or are located in small areas of the component, there is often a further practical difficulty in inspecting such layers. Furthermore, even where inspection is possible for portions of an elastomeric element, in some cases it is also difficult to know whether the condition of the inspected portion is representative of the condition of the component as a whole since predicting where the damage of the elastomer will initiate first depends on the working conditions of the parts and on the strain and stress level distributions.
As a result, it would be advantageous for components that contain elastomeric elements to be configured such that the condition of the elastomeric elements could be easily inspected, thereby allowing the amount of degradation or damage experienced by the components to be readily identified, which can enable users of the components to more accurately estimate when the components will need to be repaired and/or replaced.