Carbon fiber-reinforced polymer pultrusions adhesively bonded inside aluminum joints: experimental and numerical study

In the context of lightweight structure design for the transportation and robotics industries, new types of composite structures are being developed, in the form of trusses made of fiber-reinforced polymer composite members of small diameter. The main objective of this work is to study adhesive joints, bonding pultruded composite tubes inside aluminum pieces, numerically and experimentally. More specifically, the objective is to determine which numerical model is able to predict the joint strength the most accurately, and to examine the influence of several design parameters on the strength and weight of the joints. With this purpose, samples are manufactured with varying dimensions, and tested in tension until failure. Next to the manufacturing numerical models using either a continuum mechanics or a damage mechanics (CZM) approach are built. The comparison of the numerical results with the experimental results show that the damage mechanics approach results in the most accurate joint strength predictions. It is also found that increasing the adhesive overlap length has the highest impact on increasing the joint strength, and that reducing the adherend thickness has the highest impact on reducing the structural weight, while preserving the joint strength.