A CONVENIENT ADHESIVE STRENGTH PREDICTION METHOD FOR ADHESIVE BUTT JOINT IN TERMS OF THE CRITICAL STRESS INTENSITY FACTOR

For the purpose of predicting the tensile strength for adhesive butt joint, a convenient adhesive strength prediction method is presented in terms of the critical stress intensity factor. Based on the finite element method and adhesive tensile strength, the critical stress intensity factor can be obtained conveniently and accurately since the reference problem has exact solutions. Then, a new prediction method for the adhesive butt joint is proposed based on the conclusion that the critical stress intensity factor is almost independent of the adhesive thickness. In this paper, the predicted adhesive strengths for adhesive butt joints with different adhesive thicknesses can be obtained conveniently by using only one arbitrary reference tensile strength. To verify the correctness of this method, the measured and predicted adhesive tensile strength for adhesive butt joints with three kinds of material combinations are analyzed. The calculation results indicated that the predicted results coincide with the experimental results. The validity and usefulness of the proposed method in engineering application is proved.