The effect of bond-line thickness on fatigue crack growth rate in adhesively bonded joints

J. A. Pascoe, N. Zavatta*, E. Troiani, R. C. Alderliesten

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

26 Citations (Scopus)
105 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The effect of adhesive thickness on fatigue crack growth in an epoxy film adhesive (FM94) was investigated, using a combination of experiments and numerical modelling. For the range of thicknesses investigated an increased thickness led to an increased crack growth rate. It was found that the energy required per unit of crack growth did not depend on the adhesive thickness. In contrast, the energy available for crack growth does depend on the adhesive thickness. The numerical analysis confirms that the energy required per unit crack growth is not sensitive to the adhesive thickness, but that the plastic energy dissipation increases with the thickness. The experimental results imply that this increase of plasticity has an anti-shielding effect, as the crack growth rate is increased.

Original languageEnglish
Article number106959
JournalEngineering Fracture Mechanics
Volume229
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Apr 2020

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Keywords

  • Adhesive bonding
  • Fatigue crack growth
  • Plasticity
  • Strain energy
  • Thickness effect

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