Study on forced vibration behavior of adhesively bonded single-lap joint

With the increase in the use of adhesively bonding in primary structures, reliable and cost-effective techniques for structural health monitoring of adhesive bonding are needed. Vibration-based tests, when combined with validated FEA, can provide a key tool for structural health monitoring of adhesive bonding. This paper deals with forced vibration behavior of adhesively bonded single-lap joint theoretically and experimentally. The finite element analysis (FEA) software was used to predict the natural frequencies, mode shapes and frequency response functions (FRFs) of the joint. The dynamic test software and the data acquisition hardware were used in experimental measurement of the dynamic response of the joint. The predicted results were compared with experimentally measured ones to validate the prediction technique. It was found that the forced vibration behavior predicted from FEA matches reasonably well with the experimental observations. It can be concluded that the FEA of the forced vibration behavior of adhesively bonded single-lap joint will help future applications of adhesive bonding by allowing different parameters to be selected to give as large a process window as possible for adhesively bonded joints vibration analysis.