Free Vibration Analysis and Design of an Adhesively Bonded Corner Joint with Double Support

Abstract

This study carries out the three dimensional free vibration analysis of an adhesively bonded corner joint and investigates the effect of an additional horizontal support to the adhesive corner joint with single support on the first ten natural frequencies and mode shapes. In the presence of a horizontal support the effects of the vertical support length, the adhesive thickness, the plate thickness, and the joint length on the natural frequencies and modal strain energies of the adhesive joint were also investigated using the back-propagation Artificial Neural Network (ANN) method and the finite element method. The natural frequencies and modal strain energies increased with increasing plate thickness, whereas an adverse effect was observed for increasing joint length. Both horizontal and vertical support lengths exhibited similar effects but the adhesive thickness had a negligible effect. The plate thickness and the joint length are dominant geometrical parameters in comparison with both horizontal and vertical support lengths. The proposed ANN models were combined with the Genetic Algorithm in order to determine the optimal corner joint in which the maximum natural frequency and minimum elastic modal strain energy are achieved for each natural frequency and mode shape of the adhesive corner joint and the optimal dimensions were given versus one geometrical parameter.