Crack Growth Simulations With SMART Method in Adhesively Bonded Joints

Abstract

Due to the important advantages of adhesive joints, such as their suitability for multi-material designs, their use has been increasing in the last decade. Determining the fracture behavior of structural adhesive bondings is essential for structural durability. In crack propagation analyses, adaptive meshing has drawn considerable attention because of its improvements in terms of complex preprocessing and time management. This paper presents a recently introduced separating morphing and adaptive remeshing technology (SMART) innovative crack growth simulation for adhesively bonded joints, considering static and cyclic cases. For the static case, an R-curve was obtained for the bonding joints of carbon steel and Araldite 2015. For the cyclic case, the Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) bonding joints were analyzed under constant-amplitude loading conditions. The crack-propagation rate and the number of cycles were estimated. Crack propagation simulations were validated using experimental data. Acceptable agreement was achieved between the experimental and estimated results.