Experimental and Numerical Evaluation of composite-metal Adhesive Bonded Joints and Study on Effective Parameters

There are a great attraction toward adhesively bonded structures because of their special properties for aerospace, marine and recently automotive structures. This work is focused to study adhesive bonded joints with single lap configurations. First, by the use of cohesive zone model (CZM), which is a powerful tool for the simulation of fracture in bonded structures, the joint was modelled and validated according to various damage criteria. This model is used to investigate the effective parameters on the strength of adhesive bonded joints. Then, experiments was done to compare the differences between a model and real experiments. Some parameters like failure load, damage initiation displacement and damage displacement, overlap length are presented and compared with FEM model. Finally, an optimized joint configuration is proposed that with little modification is applicable through real adhesive bonded joints assemblies in order to increase joint’s strength and reduce damage initiation.