Cohesive modelling of the temperature dependence of epoxy based adhesives in Mode I and Mode II loading

Abstract: In this work, the influence of the temperature on the cohesive laws for two epoxy adhesives is studied at temperatures below the glass transition temperature for both Mode I and Mode II loading. Cohesive laws are measured experimentally under quasi-static loading conditions in the temperature range -30≤T≤80"C" . Three parameters of the cohesive laws are studied in detail: the elastic stiffness, the peak stress and the fracture energy. Methods for determining the elastic stiffness in Mode I and Mode II are derived and evaluated. With these methods, the results in this work show that it is possible to measure all three parameters for each pure mode loading case by the use of only the DCB- and the ENF-test specimens. Even though the measures tend to spread in values, this can significantly reduce the cost for performing experiments. It is shown that most of the cohesive parameters are decreasing with an increasing temperature in both loading modes and for both adhesives. An exception is the Mode I fracture energy for one of the adhesives. This is shown to be independent of the temperature in the studied temperature range. For the same adhesive, the Mode II fracture energy is shown to be continuously decreasing with an increasing temperature. The experimental results are verified by finite element analyses. The simulations only consider uncoupled cohesive behaviours. By use of the experimental results, simplified bi-linear cohesive laws to be used at any temperature within the studied temperature range are derived for one adhesive in both loading modes. This is desired in order to simulate adhesively bonded structures that suffer a wide range in temperature.