A 2-DIMENSIONAL STRESS-ANALYSIS OF BUTT ADHESIVE JOINTS FILLED WITH RIGID CIRCULAR FILLERS IN AN ADHESIVE SUBJECTED TO TENSILE LOADS

This paper deals with a two-dimensional stress analysis of a butt adhesive joint with rigid fillers in an adhesive subjected to a tensile load. Assuming that adherends are rigid and replacing an adhesive with a finite strip including rigid fillers, the analysis was done using the two-dimensional theory of elasticity in order to examine the joint strength. The effects of the location and size of rigid fillers on the stress distributions around the fillers and at the interfaces were shown by numerical calculations. For verification, photoelastic experiments were performed. The analytical result was in fairly good agreement with the experimental result. It was seen that based on the amount of shift of the location and the filler diameter, the joint strength was more improved than that of the joints without fillers.