Abstract
This paper dealt with a two-dimensional stress analysis of adhesive butt joints filled with elastic circular fillers in an adhesive subjected to external tensile loadings. Similar adherends and an adhesive including elastic circular fillers were replaced with finite strips in the analyses. Stress distributions in the adhesive joints were analyzed exactly using the two-dimensional theory of elasticity and the iteration method. The effects of stiffness, location of fillers and number of fillers on the interfaces stress distributions and around the fillers are shown in the numerical computations. It was seen that as an amount of number of fillers increased, stiffness of filler increased and location of filler got near the edge of interface, the strength of joints was more improved. For verification of the analyses, experiments were carried out to measure the strains. The analytical results were in fairly good agreements with the experimental ones. In addition, the analytical results are also compared with those obtained from the two-dimensional and three-dimensional FEM calculations. Fairly good agreements were seen between the analytical and the two-dimensional FEM results. However, the result from the present analysis was different from that of the three-dimensional FEM. Rupture tests were conducted, and joint strengths were seen to be improved by adding fillers.
