Delamination Arrest Methods in Structural Adhesive Joints Used in Automobiles: Fid-Bau Portal

Delamination Arrest Methods in Structural Adhesive Joints Used in Automobiles

Babu, P. Ramesh

Composite structures have wide application ranging from automobile and airframe structures to sports. Most of the automobile structures are made up of adhesive joints. These structural adhesive joints show a wide range of damage mechanisms where a set of damage modes combined together might lead to failure of joint and eventual structural collapse. A pre‐damaged skin‐stiffener structural adhesive joint analysis reveals the effects of delamination location and mode of delamination initiation and propagation. Curved composite stiffened panels are one of the most widely used examples of structural adhesive joints in automobiles. Structural health of these adhesive joints is largely affected by embedded delamination and its growth. Further, multiple embedded delamination growth in hybrid curved laminated Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites severely deters the health of the structural adhesive joints. The crack growth arrest methods such as using fasteners and Z‐pins effectively suppress delamination growth in hybrid laminated skin‐stiffener structural adhesive joints. However, the delamination located at the end and in between plies of stiffeners is very sensitive and the delamination located at the end and at the skin‐stiffener interface is another sensitive area; where it is more prone to damage. The presence of a fastener‐like crack arrest mechanism will turn normally catastrophic unstable crack propagation into a stable one, providing fail‐safe feature to the adhesive joint structure.