Structural adhesive bonded joints in engineering - process of drafting design rules for aluminium application

摘要

This paper deals with adhesive bonded joints used in aluminium structures. There are strong indications that the design rules proposed in Euirocode 9: Design of aluminium structures, have to be revised and extended. For this reason drafting new design rules will be an important objective of future research activities. This paper provides information about drafting design rules for adhesive bonded joints according to the current methodology described in Eurocode 1. It is based on structural reliability methods, which take the stochastic nature of material and geometry into account. Specific issues related to adhesive bonded joints are discussed. Both the static as well as the fatigue load cases are considered and special attention is given to the influence of temperature, long-term loads, cyclic loads and durability. The process of drafting design rules for adhesive bonded joints is formulated within the context of the reliability based methodology.