Effect of Impact-Fatigue on Damage in Adhesive Joints

Abstract

In recent decades the use of structural adhesive joints in the aerospace industry has increased considerably thanks to their high strength-to-weight ratio, low stress concentration and capacity to join different adherends. There is increasing interest in damage due to low-velocity impacts produced in adhesively bonded components and structures by vibrating loads. This type of loading is known as impact fatigue. The main aim of this paper is to investigate damage evolution in adhesive joints subjected to impact-fatigue and to compare this with damage evolution in standard fatigue (i.e. non-impacting, constant amplitude, sinusoidal fatigue). In this work, adhesively bonded lap joints were subjected to multiple tensile impacts tensile and it was seen that this type of loading was extremely damaging compared to standard fatigue. A number of methods of studying damage evolution in bonded joints subjected to fatigue and impact fatigue loading have been investigated and various parameters have been used to characterise these processes. Two modifications of the accumulated time-stress model [1-4] are proposed and it is shown that both models provide a suitable characterization of impact-fatigue in bonded joints.