LAUSR

Abstract With the advances in adhesive technology, the use of structural adhesive joints has extended to the broader engineering field as an alternative to traditional joining methods such as bolting, riveting, and welding. Therefore, characterization the adhesive joints under different loading and environmental conditions has been becoming more significant in designing adhesives joints for an engineering application. Since most of the polymer-based adhesives have non-linear mechanical behavior and loading rate sensitivity caused by their viscoelastic properties, testing adhesive joints under quasi-static loading cannot give adequate information to predict the response of adhesive joints to high loading conditions. It is therefore imperative to characterize the adhesive joints under high loading rates in order to integrate them into the applications that require high impact resistance. This study focused on the bending (mode I) characterization of adhesive joints under shock-wave loading generated by a large-scale shock tube. A specially designed adhesive joint that transfers the shock-wave loading to the bond in the mode-I form was designed, fabricated and tested. A series of shock-wave loading experiments were carried out with two different adhesive joints: aluminum-epoxy and steel-epoxy and their performances were compared. In addition to the experimental work, an FEM parametric study by an inverse problem-solving technique was used to estimate the mechanical properties of adhesive in both adhesive joints under different shock wave loading conditions. This technique also allowed to estimate the energy absorption capabilities of aluminum-epoxy and steel-epoxy joints.