ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF ADHESIVE-BONDED TEE JOINTS

In this study, the stresses in adhesive-bonded tee joints, in which a right-angled plate is bonded to a rigid plate with an adhesive, have b een analysed with a finite element method. It was assumed that the adh esive and adherends had linear elastic properties. The tee joint was a nalysed under three loading conditions, two linear and one bending mom ent. The stress distributions in the joint area are given by stress co ntours and XY plots under the three load conditions. It was found from the results that high stress concentrations occur in the inside corne r of the angle plate for loading in the x-direction (P-x) and under be nding moment (M), this suggesting that failure would not occur in the bonded joint. However, for loading in the y-direction (P-y), the maxim um normal stresses are concentrated at the left free end of the adhesi ve layer in the joint, and the first failure may be expected at this e dge. Since the geometry of the joints affects the analysis and design of such joints, the influences on the stress distributions of the over lap length, adhesive thickness and adherend thickness were investigate d. Practical experiments were carried out and it was found that experi mental results were in good agreement with those of the finite element analysis. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.