Simulation and strength and fatigue life improvement of adhesively bonded single lap joint using cohesive zone model with cyclic degrading

In this paper, the static stiffness and strength as well as fatigue life of adhesively bonded single lap joint (SLJ) are numerically studied using the cohesive zone model (CZM). In order to simulation of the SLJ using mixed-mode bi-linear CZM, the failure behavior of adhesive in modes II and III is considered the same. Fatigue damage propagation is simulated through scripting USDFLD Subroutine in ABAQUS/Standard. Static stiffness and strength and fatigue life obtained in this study are consistent with experimental results available in literature. Then, the effect of geometric parameters including overlap length, substrate thickness, and tapered substrates are investigated. The obtained results reveal that the increase of the overlap length would lead to increase the static strength and fatigue life prediction. While increasing substrate thickness results improved fatigue life, there are no a known relation between the static strength and substrate thickness due to the changes of the loading modes. Tapered substrates have also positive effect on the strength and fatigue life because of more compatible rotations. Therefore, to improve the strength and fatigue life of a SLJ, authors suggest greater overlap length and thickness along with tapered substrates.