Fracture Characteristics of Shear Adhesive Dissimilar Joint
In this study, the effect of bond thickness upon shear strength and fracture toughness of epoxy adhesively bonded joint with dissimilar adherents was addressed. The bond thickness, t between the adherents was controlled to be ranged between 0.1 mm and 1.2 mm. Finite element analyses were also executed by commercial ANSYS 11 code to investigate the stress distributions within the adhesive layer of adhesive joint. As a result, shear strength of adhesive joint reduces with increasing bond thickness. The strength of shear adhesive joint was also depended on elastic modulus of adherent. Moreover, the failure of dissimilar adherents bonded shear joint originated at a location with critical stress-y which was the interface corner of ALYH75/epoxy. In the case of shear adhesive joint with an interface crack, the fracture also occurred at the ALYH75/epoxy interface even in the steel-adhesive-aluminum (SEA) specimens. Fracture toughness, Jc of aluminum-adhesive-steel (AES) joints was similar to those of SES and demonstrates strong dependency upon bond thickness. Furthermore, the interface crack in SEA specimen has relatively large fracture resistance if compared to those in AES specimen. Finally, Kc fracture criterion was found to be appropriate for shear adhesive joints associated with adhesive fracture.