Free vibration analysis of adhesively bonded lap joints through layerwise finite element

Abstract

An investigation of vibration characteristics on adhesively bonded lap joints which considers the damping property of the adhesive layer is presented. For this purpose, a layer-wise plate finite element method is proposed and extended to model the lap joint. By imposing some additional virtual boundary conditions on the joint structure, the lap joint can be treated as a special sandwich plate, which can be hence modeled by the present method. The applicability of the present modeling method is verified through comparison with the numerical data obtained by traditional solid finite element for a functionally graded single lap joint and a two-step lap joint. Finally, a parametric study following the proposed method is also conducted to evaluate the effect of the adhesive loss factor, the overlap area, the adhesive thickness, the step height ratio and step number on the modal frequency and its corresponding modal loss factor.