Lucas Filipe Martins da Silva Knihy

This book describes most recent advances and limitations concerning design of adhesive joints under humid conditions and discusses future trends. It presents new approaches to predict the failure load after exposure to load, temperature and humidity over a long period of time. With the rapid increase in numerical computing power there have been attempts to formalize the different environmental contributions in order to provide a procedure to predict assembly durability, based on an initial identification of diffusion coefficients and mechanical parameters for both the adhesive and the interface. A coupled numerical model for the joint of interest is then constructed and this allows local water content to be defined and resulting changes in adhesive and interface properties to be predicted.

Joining techniques such as welding, brazing, riveting and screwing are used by industry all over the world on a daily basis. A further method of joining has also proven to be highly successful: adhesive bonding. Adhesive bonding technology has an extremely broad range of applications. And it is difficult to imagine a product - in the home, in industry, in transportation, or anywhere else for that matter - that does not use adhesives or sealants in some manner. The book focuses on the methodology used for fabricating and testing adhesive and bonded joint specimens. The text covers a wide range of test methods that are used in the field of adhesives, providing vital information for dealing with the range of adhesive properties that are of interest to the adhesive community. With contributions from many experts in the field, the entire breadth of industrial laboratory examples, utilizing different best practice techniques are discussed. The core concept of the book is to provide essential information vital for producing and characterizing adhesives and adhesively bonded joints.

This book deals with the most recent numerical modeling of adhesive joints. Advances in damage mechanics and extended finite element method are described in the context of the Finite Element method with examples of application. The book also introduces the classical continuum mechanics and fracture mechanics approach and discusses the boundary element method and the finite difference method with indication of the cases they are most adapted to. At the moment there a no numerical technique that can solve any problem and the analyst needs to be aware of the limitations involved in each case

A lot of recent developments have been made about adhesively bonded joints modeling using various methods of analysis. The increasing application of adhesives in industry is partly due to the increased sophistication and reliability of adhesive joints modeling. The book proposed intends to provide the designer with the most advanced stress analyses techniques in adhesive joints to reinforce the use of this promising bonding technique.