Investigation on the Load Capacity and Failure Process of T-Joint by Experiments and Numerical Method

Adhesive bonded T-joint is commonly applied in the manufacture of automotive structures. The objective of this work is the analysis of the load capacity of the adhesive-bonded T-joints under tension load and the influence causing by some parameters of adherend on the damage of T-joint. Thus, a series of tests were carried out and the balanced joint and the imbalanced joint concepts were proposed to illustrate the influence. And the results show that the imbalanced joints suffered greater stress concentration than the balanced one. Furthermore, by increasing the stiffness of adherends , one can increase the load capacity of a balanced joint. Meanwhile, in order to simulate the damage and failure processes in this type of joint, the cohesive zone model (CZM) based analysis was carried out using finite element method in ABAQUS. One can observed that only the upper end of adhesive layer transmits the load in the beginning.