Electrically conductive adhesive and soldered joints under compression

Compression of soldered and conductive adhesive joints resulted in both reversible and irreversible changes in the contact electrical resistivity. At a low stress (as low as 0.02 and 0.005 MPa for soldered and adhesive joints, respectively), the resistivity increased with almost complete reversibility as the compressive stress increased. At an intermediate stress (as low as 0.03 MPa) for both soldered and adhesive joints, the resistivity decreased with partial or complete reversibility as the stress increased. At a high stress (as high as 0.21 MPa) for the soldered joint only, the resistivity increased slightly with increasing stress. The resistivity of the soldered joint at no load increased irreversibly and gradually as stress cycling progressed, even at the lowest stress amplitude of 0.12 MPa. However, the resistivity of the adhesive joint at no load decreased irreversibly and gradually as stress cycling progressed, even at the lowest stress amplitude of 0.009 MPa.     

A method for screening adhesive materials for small displacements during environmental aging

This paper discusses the use of etalons fabricated from prepared glass slides to quantify the dimensional stability of two adhesive materials in damp environments. This technique facilitated the screening of adhesives for a kinematically demanding application. In addition to describing the etalon technique, additional data are provided on the performance of the device with the selected adhesives. One of the adhesives is simply identified as a cationic cured adhesive, while the other adhesive was Loctite 3615. A range of adhesive bond gaps from 50 to 500 μm was examined for the adhesive that showed the least displacement resulting from environmental aging. The results of this testing were applied to a kinematically sensitive device for verification of the adhesives use in this geometry.     

Stress Analysis of Tubular Adhesive Joints with Delaminated Adherend

The use of adhesive joints is becoming increasingly important in aerospace, automotive and other industries where the use of traditional fasteners is discouraged. When using composite adherends, the use of adhesively bonded joints is preferable rather than the traditional bolts and other types of fasteners, because they do not require holes, thereby removing the problems of stress concentrations around the holes. However, when using an adhesively bonded joint, there will be concentrations of the distributions of shear and peel stresses within the adhesive layer which should be controlled effectively. Therefore, the investigation of such stress variation has attracted many researchers. The aforementioned stress distributions become more complicated if the composite adherend contains a pre-existing delamination. Delamination is one of the most common failure modes in laminated composite materials; it can occur due to sudden impact by an external object, during the manufacturing process (e.g., during the filament winding process), or as a result of excessive stresses due to an applied load. It is clear that the existence of a delamination in any composite structure causes a reduction in its stiffness and in some critical situations, it may cause complete failure. This paper investigates the effect of delamination on the structural response of an adhesively bonded tubular joint with composite and aluminum adherends. The finite element method, using the commercial package ABAQUS, is used to conduct a parametric investigation. The effects of the delamination's spatial location, length, width, and the applied loading are studied. Results provide interesting insight (not necessarily intuitive) into the effect of an interlayer delamination on the stress distribution within the adhesive.     

Molecular simulations of deformation and failure in bonds formed by glassy polymer adhesives

The mechanical behavior of glassy polymer bonds is examined with molecular dynamics simulations. We show that the interfacial strength of the bond in mode I (tensile) and mode II (shear) fracture is strongly influenced by the coupling between the adhesive and adherends as well as by the roughness of the substrate surface. Failure occurs at the substrate (interfacial failure) when the interaction is weak, and in the bulk (cohesive failure) when the interaction is strong. The transition from interfacial to cohesive failure under mode I loading is nearly unaffected by roughness, while roughness leads to a dramatic increase in interfacial strength under mode II loading. Stress mixity is another crucial parameter that determines whether the polymer fails through shear deformation or through cavitation and crazing. By varying the geometry of the adhesive bond, we illustrate different limiting behaviors of a rupturing film.     

Transverse Low-Speed Impact Behavior of Adhesively Bonded Similar and Dissimilar Clamped Plates

This study concentrates on the transverse low-speed impact behavior of adhesively bonded similar and dissimilar clamped plates using the three-dimensional explicit finite element method. The contact force and plastic dissipation histories of the adhesively bonded dissimilar plates, such as aluminum–aluminum (Al–Al), aluminum–steel (Al–St), steel–aluminum (St–Al) and steel–steel (St–St) layered structures, were studied for different values of the impactor mass, radius and velocity (impact energies). The residual plastic strains in both adhesive layer and plates increased with increasing impact energies. The impactor radius had only a minor effect on the contact force histories for all configurations. The peak transverse deflection in the impact region was maximal in Al–Al, decreased in Al–St, St–Al plates and became minimal in St–St bonded plates. Impact effect was evident in the back plates of all four configurations. Al–Al plates dissipated impact energy as much as the adhesive layer, whereas the adhesive layer rather than plates absorbed the impact energy in Al–St, St–Al and St–St bonded plates and this state became evident in the St–St bonded plates. The number and locations of the steel plates considerably affected impact force history, impact time as well as the plastic dissipation level; thus, the contact force increased, the contact time shortened and the dissipated energy decreased. As the impact energy was increased the impact period got longer. Damage areas in the adhesive layer were minimal in Al–Al bonded plates but maximal in St–St bonded plates.     

Adhesion of UV-Cured Laminates of Poly(ethylene-2,6-naphthalate) (PEN) and Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) films

This paper describes the properties of an ultraviolet (UV) curable laminating adhesive system that can be used with PEN, PET and UV-stabilized PET films. The adhesive system that contains (2,4,6-trimethylbenzoyl) diphenylphosphine oxide (TPO) as photoinitiator was optimally cured with a V-bulb fitted ultraviolet irradiator. The laminated structures built with this adhesive system and PEN, PET and UV-stabilized PET films showed a large manufacturing operating window, both in terms of adhesive layer thickness, initial peel strengths above 1500 N/m, V- and D-bulb UV sources and curing speeds from 5– 10 m/min. The 600-h dry heat aging tests indicated that the UV-stabilized PET films underwent less than approximately 1% decrease in light transmission and less than a 1% gain in color. The UV-stabilized PET film and its laminate showed particularly strong retention of optical properties under damp aging and QUV weathering, compared to PEN and non-UV-stabilized PET films. Finally, the peel strengths of the laminates were retained to greater than 1300 N/m for laminate structures of 50 μm film thickness, whereas structures made from thicker films retained approx. 40–60% (700–1100 N/m) of their initial peel strength.     

Relation between phase structure and peel adhesion of poly(styrene-isoprene-styrene) triblock copolymer/tackifier blend system

The effect of tackifier on the adhesive properties of a model pressure-sensitive adhesive tape was investigated. For this purpose, a model system consisting of poly(styrene-isoprene-styrene) triblock copolymer as the base polymer and a typical aliphatic petroleum resin as the tackifier was prepared. The tackifier content ranged from 10 to 60 wt%. The tackifier used has a good compatibility with polyisoprene, whereas it has a poor compatibility with polystyrene. The 180° peel adhesion was measured. The peel adhesion increased with the tackifier content, while the degree of increase became more significant above 40 wt%. The pressure sensitivity appeared obviously and the maximum peel adhesion was obtained without heating above 40 wt%. The phase structure was determined using pulse ¹H-NMR, transmission electron microscopy and dynamic mechanical analysis. A phase structure in which spherical polystyrene domains with a mean size of about 20 nm were dispersed in the polyisoprene continuous phase was observed. It was found that the tackifier-rich phase of the order of nanometers in size was formed in the polyisoprene matrix and the concentration increased with the tackifier content. The tackifier-rich phase seemed to develop the cohesive strength and, thus, it increased the peel adhesion.     

Retentive Force of FRC Posts Inserted with Core Build-up Composites and Resin Cements

The aim of this study was to determine the retentive forces of fiber-reinforced composite (FRC) posts luted with different core build-up composite resins, and resin cements. Extracted single-rooted teeth were restored using FRC posts luted with the core build-up composites Build-It, Culmat, Flow White, Luxacore, Multi-Core Flow, Rebilda DC and luted with the resin cements Calibra, Cement-It, Multilink, and RelyX Unicem (control group, no separate etching, priming or bonding steps). The Rebilda DC was used with both the light-polymerizing Solobond and the dual-polymerizing AdheSE. Following water storage (37°C, 24 h) and thermal cycling (5000 cycles, 5–55°C, 30 s) tensile strength testing was performed and fracture modes were assessed. Statistical analysis of the data was done by one-way ANOVA, Bonferroni/Dunn correction, and unpaired t-test with α = 0.05. Except for Multilink (319 N, SD 50 N) and Cement-It (331 N, SD 85 N) significantly higher retentive forces were obtained for the core build-up composite Build-It (422 N, SD 43 N) and for the resin cements Calibra (408 N, SD 50 N) and RelyX Unicem (405 N, SD 64 N) compared to the other materials (p < 0.001). The lowest retentive forces were found for the core build-up composites Luxacore (145 N, SD 36 N) and Rebilda DC/Solobond (148 N, SD 39 N) (p < 0.001). Fracture modes were mainly interfacial. The use of core build-up composites did not improve the retentive forces of FRC posts compared to resin cements. Except for Culmat, core build-up composites as well as resin cements in combination with dual-polymerizing bonding materials were superior to composites with light-polymerizing bonding materials.     

Fracture mechanics testing of the bond between composite overlays and a concrete substrate

This paper presents a methodology for assessing the bond strength of composite overlays to concrete utilizing a fracture toughness test. The principles and practices of existing ASTM standards for determining the fracture toughness of adhesive bonds between double cantilever beam (DCB) metallic and composite specimens (D 3433-93 and D 5528-94a) have been extended to cover the case of an elastic composite layer bonded to a rigid concrete/masonry substrate. In the theoretical section, the dominant loading conditions, relevant ASTM standards, and the development of energy release rate concepts for analyzing a disbonding composite layer modeled as an elastic cantilever beam are presented. The experimental section covers specimen fabrication and preparation, experimental setup, test procedures, post-test evaluation of the specimens, and data processing. The discussion of test results focuses on explaining the variability in measured strain energy release rate, and identifies trends between the measured strain energy release rate and the fraction of the fracture surface retaining cement paste after disbonding. It was found that good-quality composite-to-concrete bond is associated with high fracture toughness of the adhesive and location of the crack path in the concrete substrate. Strict enforcement of surface preparation and adhesive handling procedures was found to play an important role in promoting good bond strength and high fracture toughness. The fracture toughness test developed in this paper can be used for screening various composite-repair systems, to assess the effect of different environmental attacks, and as a quality control tool.     

Strength Improvement of Adhesively-Bonded Joints Using a Reverse-Bent Geometry

Adhesive bonding of components has become more efficient in recent years due to the developments in adhesive technology, which has resulted in higher peel and shear strengths, and also in allowable ductility up to failure. As a result, fastening and riveting methods are being progressively replaced by adhesive bonding, allowing a big step towards stronger and lighter unions. However, single-lap bonded joints still generate substantial peel and shear stress concentrations at the overlap edges that can be harmful to the structure, especially when using brittle adhesives that do not allow plasticization in these regions. In this work, a numerical and experimental study is performed to evaluate the feasibility of bending the adherends at the ends of the overlap for the strength improvement of single-lap aluminium joints bonded with a brittle and a ductile adhesive. Different combinations of joint eccentricity were tested, including absence of eccentricity, allowing the optimization of the joint. A Finite Element stress and failure analysis in ABAQUS^® was also carried out to provide a better understanding of the bent configuration. Results showed a major advantage of using the proposed modification for the brittle adhesive, but the joints with the ductile adhesive were not much affected by the bending technique.