Numerical study of the effect of carbon fiber/epoxy resin adhesive thickness on the creep behaviour of carbon steel plate joints

Nowadays, the use of adhesive and adhesively bonded joints have been considerably appreciated in the industry due to the dramatic reduction in bonding strength, reduced stress concentration, rust prevention, uniform bonding of the bonding surface and a significant reduction in costs compared to other types of permanent joints such as welding. In this study, the effect of adhesive thickness on creep behaviour of a single lap adhesive joint with the aid of Abaqus FEM software is investigated. It should be noted that the two-layer and two-dimensional models are considered, in which their adhesive layer is made of a reinforced epoxy resin with 0.5% carbon fiber and the adherend layers are made of carbon steel plates, which is affected by tensile forces. Since the main purpose of this paper is to study the effect of adhesive thickness on the adhesive joints behaviour, the effects of the distribution of shear stress, effective stress and creep strain were studied in different thicknesses of the adhesive layer. The results show that by increasing the thickness, the stress and the creep strain decrease, and over time, the stress decreases and the creep behaviour of adhesives increases.