Fatigue life evaluation of adhesively bonded scarf joints

The fatigue life of adhesively bonded scarf joints with various scarf angles was analyzed experimentally in this study. Experimental results indicate that the fatigue strength increases significantly with the scarf angle of the studied specimen. The main failure modes for the specimens with small and large scarf angles are adhesive and cohesive, respectively. Additionally, the finite element method was employed to obtain the stress states within the studied scarf joint specimens, and the fatigue data of specimens with 0 degrees/30 degrees scarf angles and 45 degrees/60 degrees scarf angles were successfully correlated using the interfacial peeling stress parameter and the von Mises stress within the adhesive, respectively. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.