Numerical Analysis of Static Strength Riveted, Adhesive and Hybrid Joints

One of the most important processes in the structural design is the joining techniques. Adhesive bonded joints have various advantages over the riveted joints. These advantages include high strength to weight ratio, low stress concentration and large bond area for load transfer. However, adhesive bonded joints have few disadvantages as well, some of them are; (1) their disassembly may lead to the component damage (2) they have low peel strength. Due to the aforementioned disadvantages, ensuring the bondage quality is a challenge. A relatively new approach is to use adhesive bonded riveted joints which are also known as hybrid joints. Hybrid joints actually integrate of both adhesive and riveted joints. Stress concentration will be less in adhesive joints as compared to the riveted joints if number of rivets are reduced in hybrid joints and adhesive is used to overcome the strength. This study focuses on the static strength of the adhesive, riveted and the hybrid joints. Experimental and analytical results are available and numerical analysis is to be done using ANSYS®software using tensile testing and models will be made in CATIA®. All work is performed on aluminum alloy 2024-T3 commonly used in aircraft structures. Only single lap joint is studied in this paper to examine joint behaviour.