Search

High interfacial stresses near the edges of bonded joints are responsible for their debonding failure. This paper reports a new semianalytic stress-function variational approach to the interfacial stresses of a bonded joint, which is made of a straight tension bar covered with a reinforcing patch and subjected to mechanical loads and/or uniform change of temperature. The process introduces two interfacial shear and normal stress functions, which are correlated via the approximately same radius of curvature of the slender adherends. All the stress components in the joint are expressed in terms of the interfacial stress functions based on the classic Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and equilibrium equations of elasticity. Deformation compatibility of the joint is satisfied by minimizing the complementary strain energy, which leads to a fourth-order ordinary differential equation (ODE) of the interfacial shear stress function. The interfacial shear and normal stresses are determined explicitly and compared with those given by the elementary beam theory and FEM, respectively. The results gained in this study are applicable to scaling analysis of joint strength and optimization of structural design of joints. The present formalism can be extended conveniently to the mechanical stress and thermal stress analysis of various bonded structures, including adhesively bonded joints, composite joints, and recently developed flexible electronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]