Hugo C. Biscaia

In this paper, the influence of salt fog and ambient condition exposure on CFRP-to-steel bonded joints (CSJs) with a near end mechanical anchorage was studied. The tests of the CSJs were carried out with a monotonic loading history respectively with and without a near end mechanical anchorage both unaged and after being exposed to the ageing conditions. The results revealed failures in the adhesive for some CSJs with a near end mechanical anchorage, among which also exhibited the best bond performance both in aged and unaged specimens. Due to the high state of degradation after ageing exposure, local damage of the CFRP located at the gap position of the CSJs was induced by a torsion action during the fixation of the specimen in the tensile machine even prior to the testing, which caused, although locally, severe delamination of the CFRP of the aged CSJs. From the torsion test results, a decrease in the torsional capacity of the CFRP after aging revealed the degradation of the carbon fiber-to-matrix interface. Additional results reflected that a drop in the initial stiffness of the load vs. slip relationship can be observed, caused by a pre-crack with a length of 30 mm in the CSJs. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

In different industries, the bonding technique has gained several advances in recent years. However, due to the specificity of each industry, the bonded joints may present different configurations. For instance, in the case of metallic truss bridges, the use of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) bonded on the steel surface members may require circular or even tubular transitions between these materials. Although the bonded transitions between a metal and a composite material have been deeply studied with flat surfaces the information on circular or tubular hybrid bonded joints is still scarce. Therefore, the present study aims to mitigate some of this lack of knowledge by proposing an analytical solution able to describe the interfacial debonding process between a circular or tubular bonded transition between two materials. The proposed model also aims to simulate the interfacial debonding of double butt (or stepped) lap joints. Under these circumstances, a bilinear local adhesive model is adopted which required the quantification of the elastic and the softened stiffnesses as well as the pure Mode II fracture energy. The Finite Element Method (FEM) is used for the validation of the proposed model. The behaviour of the adhesive joint between materials is numerically modelled through the Cohesive Zone Modelling (CZM) in which the same bilinear shape used in the analytical solutions is adopted. Different situations were analyzed thoroughly and the numerical simulations tracked very closely the analytical results obtained from the proposed closed-form solutions. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Nowadays, adhesively bonded structures have received exhaustive attention mainly because, contrary to mechanical joints, they are able to avoid stress concentration. When a material is externally bonded to another structural member to improve the strength or stiffness of the latter, the adhesive joint is supposed to perform well for a long time, independently of the type of loading the bonded joint will be subjected to. However, studies dedicated to this topic are scarce when it comes to the influence of thermal action. The influence of temperature variations on bonded joints is not yet well understood, so more studies are needed to improve the current level of knowledge. The present study aims to develop an analytical solution capable of simulating the interfacial bond behaviour between two structural materials subjected to thermal loading. The complete debonding processes of such adhesively bonded joints are estimated based on a bi-linear bond–slip relationship. The proposed analytical model is validated by the numerical simulation of several examples, where some parameters previously identified as potentially affecting the bond behaviour are investigated. A commercial software based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) is used to support those examples in which either the analytical or the numerical simulations agreed very well. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd