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Aluminium Design and Construction John Dwight

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instead we refer to adhesive bonding or just bonding. The method is<br />

acceptable for use with all the alloy groups, <strong>and</strong> has the following<br />

advantages when compared with other connection methods:<br />

1. absence of any weakening in the connected parts;<br />

2. good appearance;<br />

3. good fatigue performance;<br />

4. good joint stiffness;<br />

5. no distortion.<br />

Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks in the use of bonding which<br />

tend to limit its range of application. Firstly, most adhesives lose strength<br />

at quite a modest temperature. Secondly, some will deteriorate when<br />

immersed in water (for a month or more). Thirdly, adhesives undergo<br />

creep under long-term sustained loading, if the stress level is too high.<br />

And, finally, there is a risk of cracking under impact conditions with<br />

some of them. All of these tendencies can be minimized by correct<br />

choice of adhesive.<br />

Bonded joints are ideally designed to act in compression or shear,<br />

<strong>and</strong> the adhesives used with aluminium have a shear strength of around<br />

20 N/mm2 . This relatively low value, which is only some 10% of that<br />

for the metal itself, can be accommodated by suitable design. One typical<br />

kind of application is when a built-up member is fabricated from two<br />

or more specially designed extrusions, employing adhesive in the<br />

longitudinal joints. Another is for lap joints between sheet-metal<br />

components. Bonding is not suitable for highly stressed joints, as at the<br />

nodes of a truss.<br />

Bonded joints are inherently poor in their resistance to peeling, a<br />

form of failure that can occur when even a small component of tension,<br />

perpendicular to the plane of the adhesive, acts at the edge of a lap<br />

joint (Figure 11.12 11.12). It is essential to eliminate any risk of such a<br />

failure by intelligent design.<br />

11.4.2 Specification of the adhesive<br />

Adhesives used for bonding aluminium are either of the two-component<br />

or one-component type. With the former, curing begins as soon as the<br />

two components are combined, <strong>and</strong> then proceeds at room temperature,<br />

although it can be speeded up by modest heating. The one-component<br />

adhesives are cured by heating the glued component in an oven; they<br />

‘go off much more quickly.<br />

Figure 11.12 Peeling component of load on a bonded joint.<br />

Copyright 1999 by Taylor & Francis Group. All Rights Reserved.

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