Research on strength of nanocomposite adhesively bonded composite joints

Due to their great advantages, adhesively bonded joints are frequently used in many areas like automotive, marine, space and aerospace industries. Especially findings from nanoscience and nanotechnology, which have progressed significantly in recent years, influence adhesives sciences significantly as well as other disciplines. In the present study, nanoparticles were added to the adhesive to increase the damage load of adhesively bonded single lap composite joints and tensile and bending moment damage loads of these joints were experimentally investigated. In the study, carbon fiber fabric reinforced composites (0/90°) with Plain Weave were used as the adherend; rigid, tough and flexible adhesive types were used as the adhesive and 1 wt% Graphene-COOH, Carbon Nanotube-COOH and Fullerene C60 were used as the nanoparticles. As a result, based on the AA2024-T3 aluminum alloy used in a study conducted by Akpinar et al. [1], the use of carbon fiber fabric reinforced composites as the adherend considerably increases the damage load of the joint, depending on the adhesive type. Moreover, when failure loads obtained from experiments were examined, the addition of nanoparticles to the adhesive was shown to increase the tensile and four-point bending damage load of joint, depending on the adhesive and nanoparticle type. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd