Adhesives for Load-Bearing Timber-Glass Elements : Elastic, plastic and time dependent properties

This thesis work is part of an on-going project regarding load-bearing timber glass composites within the EU program WoodWisdom-Net. One major scope of that project is the adhesive material between the glass and timber parts. The underlying importance of the bonding material is related to the transfer of stress between the two materials – the influence of the adhesive stiffness and ductility on the possibility of obtaining uniform stress distributions. In this study the mechanical properties of two different adhesives are investigated, an epoxy (3M DP490) and an acrylate (SikaFast 5215). The differences of the adhesives lay in dissimilar stiffness, strength and viscous behaviour. In long term load caring design is important to understand the materials behavior under a constant load and a permanent displacement within the structure can cause major consequences. Therefore the main aim in this project is to identify the adhesives strength, deformation capacity and possible viscous (time dependent) effects. Because of the limitation of equipment and time this study is restricted to only three different experiments. Three different types of tensile tests have been conducted: monotonic, cyclic relaxation tests.The results of the experiments show that 3M DP490 has a higher strength and a smaller deformation capacity as compared to the SikaFast 5215. Thus, the SikaFast 5215 is more ductile. The 3M DP490 exhibits a lower loss of strength under constant strain (at relaxation). SikaFast 5215 showed also a large dependency of strain level on the stress loss in relaxation