Deformations in adhesively bonded joints on elastic foundations

Analytical treatment of the deformations in adhesively bonded joints on elastic foundations is presented, with special attention to the specific case of adhesive joints between the face sheets of sandwich beams. While the subject of deformations in adhesively bonded joints has been studied in detail over the past six decades, no work on the subject of modeling adhesive joints on elastic foundations exist. The analytical model idealizes the overlap region as a single cylindrically bent plate, and thus applies to both balanced and unbalanced joint types of various configurations. The influence of the elastic foundation parameters on the magnitude of the edge moment is studied in detail. Results show that the elastic foundation acts to reduce the magnitude of the bending moments at the ends of the overlap, and alleviate the geometric non-linearity in the adhesive joint response. The integrity of the model is verified through good agreement with non-linear finite element model results, and other analytical models found in the literature. Strain energy release rates in adhesively bonded sandwich beams are computed using the proposed model, and are shown to correlate well with experimental results.