Effect of crack-growth mechanism on the prediction of fracture load of adhesive joints

This paper presents observations regarding the cracking behavior of tensile-loaded structural adhesive joints. Experiments showed that fracture occurred by the development and propagation of a damage zone, rather than a single, sharp crack, and that the presence of the adhesive spew fillet did not affect the fracture load of the adhesive joints studied. For joints bonded with the mineral-filled epoxy Cybond 4523GB (American Cyanamid), there was approximately 5 mm of subcritical crack propagation prior to final fracture. Fracture-load predictions based on the initial uncracked geometry made in previous papers were unaffected by this small change in geometry. For joints bonded with the rubber-toughened epoxy Permabond ESP 310, approximately 50 mm of subcritical crack propagation was observed. It was again found that predictions made in previous papers on the basis of the initial geometry gave a good estimate of the final fracture load even though this subcritical crack propagation significantly altered the geometry, and thus the applied energy release rates. The effect of shear deformations of the adherends was also investigated, and it was found that shear deformations could be neglected in engineering calculations for joints subject to remote tensile loading.     

Failure load prediction of structural adhesive joints : Part 2: Experimental study

The objective of this study was to determine how the fracture of adhesive joints depends on elastic beam parameters describing the adherends and the applied loads. The basic specimen geometry was the cracked lap shear joint constructed of aluminium alloy with various adherend and bondline thicknesses. Loads were applied in different combinations of bending, tension and shear to generate a failure envelope for each adhesive and specimen geometry. It was found that crack propagation for precracked specimens occured at a critical strain energy release rate but was also a function of the G_I/G_II ratio and the bondline thickness. The experiments also showed that the loads required to propagate a crack in a precracked specimen were always lower than the loads required to break the fillet. Hence, by treating uncracked joints as being cracked, where the fictitious crack tip is assumed to coincide with the location of the fillet, a conservative estimate of the failure load is obtained.     

Bulk mass flow in a vibratory finisher: mechanisms and effect of process parameters

Vibratory finishing is a widely-used manufacturing process in which a vibrating container filled with granular media becomes fluidized. The resulting bulk flow entrains workpieces and exposes their surfaces to the impacts resulting from the small-scale media vibrations. The bulk flow is responsible for entrainment and mixing, while the media vibration does work on the surfaces. The selection of machine vibration parameters is commonly based on experience due to the difficulty in predicting the fluidized bed behavior. In this work, a discrete element method was used to investigate how the bulk flow in an actual tub finisher filled with steel balls depends on the tub motion parameters through a parametric study. The underlying mechanisms that create and drive the bulk flow were identified by examining the relationships between the bulk flow rates and the wall forces. Finally, the connection between the wall motion and the wall forces was investigated. The tub frequency was the most effective control parameter and there was an optimal phase difference between the horizontal and vertical vibrations to maximize bulk flow. The relationship between the media packing at the walls and the tangential forces between the walls and the media explained the formation and speed of the bulk flow. Lastly, it was shown that the tangential wall forces, unlike the normal forces, cannot be obtained from the known wall motion alone since they also depend on the media velocities relative to the walls.     

Influence of process parameters on average particle speeds in a vibratory finisher

Vibratory finishing (VF) employs vibrationally-fluidized granular media to finish the surfaces of workpieces that are entrained in the flowing media. Its application has been based mostly on experience and trial-and-error due to the complexity of the granular material behavior. The present study used discrete element modeling (DEM) to investigate how the movement of a commercial two-dimensional tub finisher influenced the average particle speed of the media in a bed of smooth, steel, spherical particles, and thus the work that would be done on an entrained workpiece. The parameters governing the tub wall motion (frequency, in-plane amplitudes, and phases of vibration) and the coefficient of friction between the media and the wall were systematically varied in 71 three-dimensional DEM simulations. The average particle speed was affected mostly by the vertical amplitude of tub motion rather than by the frequency, and was mostly independent of other parameters of motion and of the wall friction. A strong relationship was found between the average particle speed and the work done by the wall per cycle of vibration. The normal force on the wall was also found to correlate strongly with the normal component of the wall velocity. Together, these relationships offer the potential to enable the analytical prediction of the average particle speed based on the motion parameters of the tub alone. The paper provides a set of practical guidelines for the control of the average particle speed in VF that are explained by the forces between the media and walls of the tub finisher.     

Adhesive Joint Durability Assessed Using Open-faced Peel Specimens

This paper presents an investigation of the durability of two aluminum-epoxy adhesive systems by means of open-faced peel specimens. A peel analysis model was used to determine the fracture energy from the peel data. Both wet and dry peel tests were conducted in order to distinguish between the reversible and the permanent effects of water. The effects of water on the cohesive properties of the adhesives were also assessed by tension tests. It was found that, for the two-part epoxy adhesive, which plasticized to a large extent, the peel testing should be carried out in a dry state to assess the interfacial weakening. It was also observed that the two-part adhesive was much stiffer in the dry, degraded state, and it was important to take account of such permanent changes in the cohesive properties associated with water uptake when determining the fracture energy from the peel data. In contrast, the one-part epoxy system did not suffer from appreciable cohesive changes, either reversible or permanent. In this case, both wet and dry failure loci were interfacial, and some of the interfacial damage was found to be reversible. Finally, surface analyses of the peel failure surfaces were carried out, and the formation of micro-debonds was identified as a possible mechanism of degradation for the two-part system.     

Strength of adhesive joints with adherend yielding: II. Peel experiments and failure criteria

Peel tests were conducted with an epoxy adhesive on nine rigid-flexible peel configurations: combinations of 1, 2, and 3 mm aluminum adherend thickness and 30°, 60°, and 90° peel angle. The peel model described in an accompanying paper was used to calculate the stress and strain distributions in the adhesive, the strain energy release rates, and the root curvature of the adherend corresponding to steady-state peel failure. Two failure criteria were examined: the critical von Mises strain and the critical fracture energy, G c . The first criterion was found to be essentially independent of the peel angle but dependent on the thickness of the peel adherend. It produced predictions of the peel force that had an average error of 11%. The fracture energy criterion showed that G c depended on the average phase angle of the loading. This criterion was preferred, having an average prediction error of 6% over the nine experimental cases, and requiring fewer free parameters.     

Modeling the development of Almen strip curvature in vibratory finishing

The paper presents a model of the process by which Almen strips are plastically deformed by media impacts in vibratory finishing. The motivation behind this was to extend the use of Almen strip measurements as a means of characterizing the effect of media impact velocity on residual stress formation during vibratory finishing. Two impact velocity distributions measured in a vibratory finisher were used in the model to simulate the deformations of the surface of an Almen strip. Two thicknesses of Almen strips were considered. The quantitative agreement between the model saturation curves and the experimental curves describing the Almen strip deflection as a function of finishing time was fair, though the overall trends regarding deflection were predicted well.     

Impact of rigid angular particles with fully-plastic targets Part II: Parametric study of erosion phenomena

The erosion of substrates of arbitrary dynamic hardness and friction coefficient, due to the impact of individual angular particles, was analyzed with the purpose of predicting crater size, shape, and rebound parameters as a function of incident particle velocity, angle, orientation, and shape. A rigid-plastic theory due to Hutchings (International Journal of Mechanical Sciences 1997; 19:45–52), developed for square plates impacting frictionless surfaces, is generalized for arbitrarily shaped particles impacting surfaces having nonzero friction. The specific case of symmetric angular particles of arbitrary angularity is studied in detail. The model is shown to match Hutchings’ [1] experimental data for square steel plates on smooth steel surfaces. In a companion paper (Papini, Spelt, under review), a parametric study of the input parameters is presented.     

Abrasive jet micro-machining of planar areas and transitional slopes in glass using target oscillation

Analytical models are presented which allow the prediction of the shape, sidewall slope, and depth of abrasive jet micro-machined planar areas and transitional slopes in glass using a novel technique in which the target is oscillated transversely to the overall scan direction. A criterion was developed to establish the minimum oscillation velocity to ensure negligible surface profile waviness in the scanning direction. If the oscillation velocity is sufficiently greater than the scanning velocity, the target receives an approximately uniform energy flux, resulting in a high degree of flatness for both masked and unmasked planar areas micro-machined in glass. It was also found that particle scattering from the mask edge caused the sidewalls of a planar area to be very shallow, on the order of a few degrees. Two methods were investigated to machine planar areas with increased sidewall slope using target oscillation: (i) machining micro-channels adjacent to the planned planar area, and (ii) target oscillation with an obliquely oriented nozzle. Among these two methods, target oscillation with an obliquely oriented nozzle created steeper sidewalls and was easier to implement, but it also caused appreciable mask under-etching. A major distinction between the target oscillation approach and a previously published method that was based on the superposition of the erosion profiles of adjacent nozzle scans, is that the latter is capable of machining an arbitrary surface profile over a large area, whereas the present target oscillation technique is intended only for the machining of flat planar areas at a single elevation. For such applications it is the preferred approach.