Evaluation of Strength of Adhesively Bonded Metallic Single Lap Joint with Different End Geometries 2018-01-1238

Adhesive bonding is increasingly being used in load-bearing engineering applications, particularly for joining sheet materials. The strength of the adhesive bonding is affected by bond length, adhesive thickness, adherend thickness, curing conditions and joint end geometry. In this experimental work single lap joints (SLJ) were tested to study the effect of joint end geometry on failure strength for three different adhesives using aluminum alloy as adherend. Three end geometries i.e. square ended, filleted and tapered plus filleted were evaluated. Test specimens were prepared in accordance with ASTM standard D-1002-10. Experimental results demonstrate that filleted end geometry shows the maximum failure strength and square ended joint has the least strength for all three adhesives. FEM analysis was also performed to study the stress distribution in adhesive layer and it was found that square ended joint had the maximum stress concentration, whereas filleted joint has the least stress concentration at overlap ends. FEM based stress distribution analyses thus show agreement with the experimental observations.