Deformation Characteristics and Delamination Strength of Adhesively Bonded Aluminium Alloy Sheet under Plastic Bending

Press-formed sheet metal parts are usually adhesively bonded together at the final stage of assembly. Instead of such a conventional process, a new technique of press-forming of adhesively bonded sheet metals was investigated. In this process, first flat sheets are adhesively bonded, and then press-formed into final shapes. From V-bending experiments on adhesively bonded aluminium alloy sheets, it was found that large shear deformation occurred in the adhesive layer during the bending, which in some cases lead to the delamination. Both from the experimental observations and numerical simulation, it is concluded that the large shear deformation of the adhesive layers can be suppressed when performing air-bending of enough long span, rather than die-contact V-bending.