Improvement of Fatigue Strength of Adhesive Joints through Filler Addition

The effect of filler addition on the fatigue strength of adhesive joints was in-vestigated. Both epoxy resin (Epikote 828) and polyamide (Versamid 125 or 115) were adopted as the adhesive components; the filler added in the adhesive was chrysotile-asbestos. The experimental results showed that the fatigue strength is improved by add-ing the filler and depends on adhesive layer thickness as well as adhesive composition. Furthermore, the variation trends in strain range of the adhesive layer during the fatigue process were examined for the specimens with/without filler. For the specimen with the filler the strain range rapidly increases just before the fracture, and a fatigue hardening phenomenon is revealed in the fatigue life over 106 cycles. SCOPE DHESIVE BONDING AS A METHOD OF FABRICATION HAS ATTRACTEDAspecial interest recently, as it offers potential advantage of saving the material costs and simplified manufacturing processes. In enlarging the ap-plication of adhesive joints to the mechanical elements, however, there is not enough of the necessary basic data on mechanical properties of adhesive *To whom communications should be addressed