A MATHEMATICAL MODEL FOR A PSEUDO-PLASTIC WELDING JOINT

Abstract

An elementary situation in welding involves the perfect assembly of two adherents and a strong adhesive occupying a thin layer. The bulk energy density of the hyperelastic adherents grows superlinearly while that of the pseudo-plastic adhesive grows linearly with a stiffness of the order of the inverse of its thickness ε. We propose a simplified but accurate model by studying the asymptotic behavior, when ε goes to zero, through variational convergence methods: at the limit, the intermediate layer is replaced by a pseudo-plastic interface which allows cracks to appear.