Date of Award
5-1-2015
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Mechanical Engineering
First Advisor
Chu, Tsuchin
Abstract
Advanced composite materials are widely used for many structural applications in the aerospace/aircraft industries today. Joining of composite structures using adhesive bonding offers several advantages over traditional fastening methods. However, this technique is not yet employed for fastening the primary structures of aircrafts or space vehicles. There are several reasons for this: There are not any reliable non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods that can quantify the strength of the bonds, and there are no certifications of quality assurance for inspecting the bond quality. Therefore, there is a significant need for an effective, reliable, easy to use NDE method for the analysis of composite adhesive joints. This research aimed to investigate an adhesively bonded composite-aluminum joints of variable bond strength using digital image correlation (DIC). There are many future possibilities in continuing this research work. As the application of composite materials and adhesive bond are increasing rapidly, the reliability of the composite structures using adhesive bond should quantified. Hence a lot of similar research using various adhesive bonds and materials can be conducted for characterizing the behavior of adhesive bond. The results obtained from this research will set the foundation for the development of ultrasonic DIC as a nondestructive approach for the evaluation of adhesive bond line.
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