Assessments for impact of adhesive properties: modeling strength of metallic single lap joints

Abstract

Adhesively bonded joints are widely used in a variety of industrial and engineering activities. Their overall strength is dependent on the properties of the adhesives. In the present research, assessments of adhesive properties were performed systematically through defining both strength mixity and energy rate mixity and using them to characterize the overall strength of metallic single lap joints. By means of the cohesive zone model, the adhesive strength mixity was defined as the ratio of the shear and tensile separation strength, and the energy rate mixity was defined as the ratio of the area below the shear cohesive curve and the area below the tensile cohesive curve. For each specified group of mixity parameters, corresponding to the properties of a specified adhesive, the overall strengths and the critical displacements of bonded joints were characterized. A series of strength and energy rate mixities were taken into account in the present calculations. A comparison of the present calculations with some existing experiments was carried out for both brittle and ductile adhesives. Finally, in the calculations presented here, damage initiation and evolution of the adhesive layer were also undertaken. The results showed that the overall strength of the joints was significantly depended on the adhesive properties, which were characterized by the strength and energy rate mixities of the adhesive. Furthermore, the shear adhesive stress components played a dominate role in both the damage initiation and evolution in the adhesives, which were also affected by the overlap length of the joints.

Keywords:

• finite element analysis
• mixed-mode cohesive zone model
• strength mixity
• energy rate mixity
• adhesively bonded joint

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11021262, 10932011 and 90816004) and MOST of China through Grant 2012CB937500.