LAUSR

Adhesively bonded repairs are frequently used to repair aluminum structures due to their attractive options compared to traditional methods such as welding or riveting. A new method of increasing the repair’s strength against uniaxial tensile loads is used in this study. For this purpose, standard single-strap (SS) and double-strap (DS) repairs were produced with aluminum patch. In the first step, an epoxy-based adhesive was employed to create SS and DS repairs using neat adhesive and 0.5 wt.% reduced graphene oxide (RGO)-reinforced adhesive. Afterward, samples of SS and DS joints with the reinforced adhesive were manufactured to study the effect of the added RGO. Uniaxial tensile tests were conducted and above 30% enhancement in the ultimate load was observed in the joints bonded with reinforced adhesive. The repaired joints were analyzed by finite element (FE) method using cohesive zone modeling technique to obtain failure loads. For this purpose, two sets of tests (a) double cantilever beam and (b) end notch flexure tests were implemented to estimate the cohesive zone model CZM parameters. Comparing the results obtained from experiments and the numerical simulations shows that FE models accurately predict the failure load in the reinforced and unreinforced repaired joints.