Dismantlable adhesive joints for decommissioning, repair and upgrade

Adhesive bonding is well established as one the most successful means of joining advanced composite materials, which are increasingly employed to reduce weight and extend service life. It is also well known that adhesives used to sustain structural loads tend to be permanent, cross-linked and irreversible, which raises particular challenges when equipment becomes obsolete or when there is a need for upgrade or repair. This paper reviews the latest published work on dismantlable adhesive technologies, and highlights the criteria needed to evaluate potential disbondable systems. Whilst tailored formulations, originally developed as selfhealing polymers, demonstrate considerable promise for self-repair, re-adjustment and disbonding, it concludes that additives, in the form of expandable reactive agents, offer demonstrable performance and relatively simple adaptation to bonding technology currently employed. These, in conjunction with appropriate design strategies in order to aid design for disassembly, should offer potential solutions for innovation in temporary repair and upgrade scenarios, including adaptive armour or the development of new modular design platforms using advanced composites