Single-lap joints are a widely-used and relatively strong and simple way joining two materials via an overlapping bond. With the growing use of composite materials in modern design practices, the need to join increasingly dissimilar materials has arisen. As such, knowledge concerning the behavior of single-lap joints with dissimilar adherends is essential.To investigate the behavior of single-lap joints as material and geometric properties are varied under tensile loading, an analytically verified finite element parametric study was conducted on both ideally and adhesively bonded single-lap joints, measuring the changes in stress value at points of critical stress concentrations. In order to correlate the finite element analysis with real-world lap joint behavior, digital image correlation was used to record the deformation of lap joint specimens under a tensile load. A finite element model was then developed, and compared, to the experimental results.With the results of the parametric study and experimental comparison, trends in stress changes were identified and explained, and design suggestions were made based on these trends. The results of the experimental finite element model were reasonably correlated, and several suggestions for improvements were made. -- Abstract.
Read
