Experimental study on the bond behavior between CFRP plates and steel substrates under fatigue loading

This paper reports an experimental study on the fatigue behavior of bonded interfaces between carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) plates and steel plates. A total of 20 single-shear bonded joints were tested under monotonic and fatigue loading. The digital image correlation (DIC) method was employed. The effects of the load ratio, adhesive thickness and adhesive type on the fatigue life were investigated. The failure mode, fatigue life, relative slip, load-slip curve, CFRP strain and interfacial shear stress are presented. The results indicated that the cohesive failure was the dominated failure mode for all specimens. With the increase of the loading cycles, the debond initiated firstly at the loaded end and then propagated gradually toward the free end, which was obviously reflected by CFRP strain and shear stress distributions. The hysteresis was observed in the load-slip curve, indicating the energy dissipation occurred in the interfaces. The fatigue life decreased dramatically with the increase of the load ratio. When the load ratio was the same, the fatigue life decreased with an increasing adhesive thickness, and the fatigue life of the specimen with Sikadur-30 was longer than that with Araldite-2015. However, when the load range was similar, the fatigue life increased with an increase in the adhesive thickness, and the fatigue life of the specimen with Araldite-2015 was longer than that with Sikadur-30. The distribution shapes of the shear stress for two types of the specimens were approximately trapezoidal and triangular under monotonic and fatigue loading.