Experimental and numerical analysis on the strength of 2060 Al–Li alloy adhesively bonded T joints

Abstract T joint is the most widely used joint in civil aircraft. The strength of the adhesively bonded T joint is influenced by the dimension of the joint, the size of the adherend and the adhesive bondline, and the mechanical properties of the adherend and the adhesive. Mechanical properties of different T joint configurations subjected to tensile loading were investigated experimentally and numerically in this study. Experimental studies were conducted on five different types of T joints produced by using a two-part epoxy adhesive to bond with aluminum alloy. Stress and deformation analyses of the T joints were performed by using commercial FE software package MSC.Marc. The mechanical behaviors of both adhesives (EA9394) and adherend (2060-T8) were considered. The results of the numerical analysis are in good agreement with those of experimental tests. It is illustrated that the variation of the geometry of the bondline has a strong effect on the stress distributions, stress concentrations, and the load bearing capacity of the adhesively bonded T joint. The average failure load rises with the average bonding area increasing, and the displacement in Y axis has a trend to decrease as the average bondline area increases.