Numerical Investigation of the Adhesive Damage Used for the Repair of A5083 H11 Aluminum Structures by Composites Patches

Abstract

In addition of binding the patch to the cracked material, adhesives play an important role in bonded composite repair because they make the bridge of transfer of loads between the patch and the cracked material. Indeed, any damage in adhesives will affect the efficiency and the performance of the repaired structure by composite patches.In this paper, two different adhesive shapes were numerically investigated, using finite element method in order to estimate the damage zone area on the adhesive bonded composite repair in 5083 marine grade aluminum alloy and its effect on the efficiency and performance of the repaired structure. The obtained results proved that the circular shape causes less damage than the rectangular one for the three crack lengths chosen. Moreover, both shapes of adhesive maintain their performance repair without disband risk and without reaching the critical value defined by Ban and co-authors (Dr=0.2474). Furthermore, it is concluded that the damage zone increases with the increase of the adhesive thickness and the decrease of the patch thickness and the use of circular shape is more effective than the rectangular one for the configurations and loading conditions studied.

The Effect of corrosion on the quality repair of the aluminum alloy A 5083 H11 by bonded composites

“…8 illustrates the evolutions of the damaged areas (gray surfaces) of the adhesive used for the repair of the corroded plate with carbon/epoxy and boron/epoxy patches under different loadings σ=220, 250, 300 and 350 MPa. It can be seen that the damaged area increases with the increase of the load for both patches, until it reaches a critical value (Dr=0.2474) for the high loads (especially when σ=350 MPa), where the adhesive loses its rigidity and the adherence between the composite and the metal becomes very weakened as demonstrated by several authors [9,24,25]. In this case, we can note that corrosion plays an important role on the repair quality, however when the applied loads are below 300 MPa, a good repair performance has been noticed.…”

“…The damage ratio r D of the adhesive has been evaluated. The mechanical properties of both patches are selected according to several references [9,19,20] and are given in Tab. 1.…”

“…[7]. In a previous work, Sadek et al [8] analyzed by finite element, the performance of repair with patch composite using different shapes in the case of marine structures.The evolution of the damaged zone under the crack effect only has been also studied [9]. However, rare are the studies on the performance of bonded composite patch repair in corroded aluminum structures [10].…”