Investigation of geometric and material effects on the fatigue performance of composite and steel adhesive joints

This study experimentally investigates the combined effect of several parameters on the fatigue behaviour of adhesive bonded single lap joints, including: substrate material (steel, glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) and carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP)); adhesive material (epoxy and methacrylate); as well as joint geometry (overlap length and adhesive thickness). Results showed that despite the lower bulk strength of the ductile methacrylate adhesive, in terms of the ratio of fatigue load to ultimate failure load, joints bonded by this adhesive had a higher fatigue performance when compared to joints bonded by the epoxy one, with differences in fatigue life of up to 20 times for the same load ratio. In a similar substrate configuration, flexible GFRP substrates reduced the fatigue life of the joints bonded by the methacrylate adhesive more than 10 times when compared to steel joints for the same load. However, in a dissimilar configuration, an increase in fatigue life was observed which, based on a finite element analysis, was attributed to the ductility of the adhesive and its effects on the stress field. In CFRP joints bonded by the epoxy adhesive, a deterioration in fatigue performance was observed due to the occurrence of interfacial failure. Regarding the geometrical factors, increasing overlap length led to a decrease of the fatigue life for the same nominal shear stress. Similar trend was obtained for adhesive thickness. A parametric analysis revealed that overlap length is the parameter that affects more the fatigue performance of the joints.