A beam test for adhesives

The strength of materials solution for a new bonded cantilever beam test specimen to determine adhesive shear properties is reviewed and discussed. A parametric analysis for the adhesive shear stress and for the end deflection reveals the specimen dimensions required for reliable bonded adhesive shear properties determination. Recommendations are provided for conducting reproducible tests. A pure and quasi-uniform shear test for stiff adhesives is proposed.

Analytical solutions are compared with Finite Element solutions from VISTA and NOVA for the stresses in the adhesive. It appears that the assumption of pure shear is nearly valid even for very stiff and/or very thick adhesives. In order to increase the end point deformations for stiff adhesives, a modified specimen is proposed. Three-dimensional effects through the thickness of the adhesive layer are studied with the program ABAQUS.

Experiments were performed using the two methods derived from theory and good correlation between theory and experiment were obtained with some restrictions. For both methods, experimental results underlined the need for defining proper specimen geometry prior to testing. Simple numerical codes are proposed to facilitate this purpose.