Comparison between brittle and ductile adhesives in CFRP/steel joints

Abstract

The application of bonded CFRP on metallic bridge structural elements is a repair technique with great potential. The choice of the adhesive type plays a key role in the performance of the repair. Most previous researches utilized brittle adhesives specially developed for the concrete-CFRP bonding which does not provide the best performance for steel/CFRP joints. The recent high-strength ductile adhesives developed for the automotive industry to bond metallic and composite materials are more appropriate for CFRP/Steel joints. This paper compares the performance of brittle adhesive and ductile adhesive in CFRP/steel double strap joints subjected to tensile loading. The results revealed that the ductile adhesives achieve much higher performance than brittle ones. Digital image correlation (DIC) shows that specimens with ductile adhesive have a more uniform strain distribution compared to the brittle ones. (C) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.