Influences of temperature, fatigue and mixed mode loading on the cohesive properties of adhesive layers

This thesis concerns some aspects that have influence on the strength of adhesive layers. The strength is determined by the stress deformation-relation of the layer. This relation is also referred to as cohesive law. The aspects having influence on the cohesive laws that are studied in this work are temperature, fatigue, multi-axial fatigue and mixed mode loading. For each aspect, a model is developed that can be used to describe the influence of the aspects on the cohesive laws numerically, e.g. by using the finite element method. These models are shown to give good agreement with the experimental results when performing simulations that aims at reproducing the experiments. For the aspect of temperature, a FE-model is suggested that can be used to simulate the mechanical behaviour in pure mode loadings at any temperature within the evaluated temperature span. Also, a damage law for modelling high cycle fatigue in a bonded structure in multi-axial loading is presented. Lastly, a new experimental set-up is presented for evaluating strength of adhesives during mixed mode loading. The set-up enables loading with a constant mode-mix ratio and by the experimental results, a potential model for describing the mechanical behaviour of the evaluated adhesive is presented