Högskolan i Skövde

For adhesive tapes, the strain before fracture often exceeds 500%. Although the maximum stresses are quite modest the high strains to fracture result in impressive fracture energy. Due to hydrostatic stress the fracture process often starts by nucleation of microscopic cracks inside the layer. The final crack path is usually close to one of the adherends.

Repeated experiments are performed both with DCB-specimens and butt-joints. The used adhesive tape is an acrylic foam tape with a thickness of 1.1 mm and a width of 19 mm. The geometry of the specimen is adapted to the properties of the soft layer. For the DCB-specimen this implies that the length of the specimen is about 1 m. The evaluated cohesive laws from the DCB- specimens give a fracture energy of 2 kN/m and a maximum stress about 0.5 MPa. For the butt-joints, the evaluated cohesive law corresponds well to the results from the DCB-experiments. However, the strain to fracture is slightly smaller. The stress in these specimens is distributed over a larger area and a nucleated crack rapidly crosses the load bearing area and fails the joint prematurely. For both kinds of experiments the evaluated cohesive laws show a small linear part. After this part there is an almost linear strain-hardening phase until fracture.