Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	EP/C547888/1
Title:	The Application of Fracture Mechanics to Engineering Adhesive Joints: An Investigation into Mode II and High Rate Loading
Principal Investigator:	Blackman, Professor BRK
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department:	Mechanical Engineering
Organisation:	Imperial College London
Scheme:	First Grant Scheme Pre-FEC
Starts:	01 June 2005	Ends:	31 May 2007	Value (£):	125,607
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Materials testing & eng.
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Aerospace, Defence and Marine Transport Systems and Vehicles
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
Structural adhesives are Increasingly being used in demanding engineering applications, as designers and manufacturers take advantage of the many benefits that adhesive bonding offers over the traditional joining techniques of welding and riveting. These include the ability of an adhesive to distribute the loading stresses evenly and also to avoid areas of stress concentration around a rivet or bolt hole. Indeed, the use of structural adhesives in engineering applications is a major growth area, and the UK is currently at the forefront. For example, the new Airbus 380 employs structural adhesives to join many parts of the primary structure. Another example, this time in the automotive industry, is the Aston Martin Vanquish V12, which relies upon structural adhesives to bond aluminium alloy to carbon-fibre reinforced composite, to provide a light weight vehicle structure with excellent mechanical performance. Indeed, the drive towards light weight materials has been partly fuelled by recent environmental legislation which aims to reduce harmful emissions, and reducing vehicle weight is one of the main routes which manufacturers are taking to achieve these goals. Adhesive bonding allows designers the flexibility to select the optimum material for a given application, safe in the knowledge that the materials can be joined satisfactorily.However, at present the structural performance of adhesive joints is not fully understood under all conditions likely to be encountered in service. This is resulting in large safety factors being imposed by designers in their structures, and the non optimum use of materials. The proposed research aims to investigate how adhesive joints fail when subjected to mode II (in-plane shear stresses) and also how they respond to impact or high rate loading. These loading conditions are both likely to be encountered in, for example, vehicle structures, and the results of the proposed research are intended to enable more accurate performance models to be developed. The research will use a novel experimental approach for mode II fracture, in which many of the problems associated crack length definition and measurement are circumvented. The applicability this novel approach will be investigated and extended to several popular mode II test methods. The research into the high rate fracture behaviour of bonded joints will employ high speed digital video analysis in combination with new analysis methods. In addition, the research aims to develop test methods which can be readily employed by industry and material suppliers to assess the performance of joints under these important loading conditions. The researchers will collaborate closely with researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA) In the high rate test programme.
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Organisation Website:	http://www.imperial.ac.uk