The effect of viscoelasticity on creep behavior of double-lap adhesively bonded joints

The effect of viscoelasticity of epoxy adhesive on creep behavior in the adhesive layer of a double-lap joint is studied in this paper. The joint is comprised of three elastic single isotropic adherend layers joined by an epoxy adhesive that is under shear loading. Prony series is used to modeling the relaxation modulus of epoxy adhesive. The differential equation is derived in Laplace domain, and numerical inversion from the Laplace domain to the time domain is achieved by the Fixed Talbot method. Results show that for an impulse load of 100N, maximum shear stress in the adhesive layer is reduced to 38% of its initial value after almost 12 days and 79% of its initial value over a very long time. The rate of increase in tensile load P has a direct effect on peak shear stress developed in the adhesive layer and holding P0 as a constant, increasing t p will lower the induced peak shear stress in the joint. Also, an increase in the thickness of the adhesive layer reduced the induced peak shear stress and strain in the joint.