Numerical Investigations on the Mechanical Properties of Adhesively Bonded Hollow Sphere Structures

This article is on the numerical determination of the mechanical properties of adhesively bonded hollow sphere structures (HSS). Two types of morphologies, namely syntactic and partial HSS, are considered. In the case of syntactic HSS, the hollow steel spheres are completely embedded in adhesive matrix, whereas for partial HSS the adhesive is concentrated at the contact points of neighbouring spheres. In addition to the elastic properties of the structure, the initial tensile and compressive yield strengths and the 1% offset yield strengths are calculated and compared for both configurations. Here, the anisotropic behavior of the adhesive in the tensile and compressive regime is incorporated. It could be shown that both configurations reveal quite different behavior on the macro-scale and therefore can be chosen according to specific requirements. Furthermore, the applicability of the adhesive as design parameter for the mechanical properties of HSS is shown.