Recent Trends and Developments on Joints in Hybrid Composite Structures

Abstract

Over the period of time the use of light weight and high strength hybrid composite structures has been increased in various sectors such as aerospace, automobile, electronics, sports, packaging, wind, building and construction . Accordingly, the demand for joining composites structure with ease and economy has also been increased. Due to complicated nature of joining the hybrid composite structures researchers made constant efforts to design and develop innovative joints with high joint strength and other desirable properties. Normally, the traditional joining techniques such as mechanical fastening (bolted joint, rivet joint, pinned joint), and adhesive bonds are widely used to join conventional materials. The adhesive joint has superior fatigue strength, light weight, better corrosion resistant and resistance to mechanical damage in comparison with other conventional mechanical joints. The factors influencing load bearing strength of the composite joints such as adherend and adhesive thickness are well established in the literature. In this article, several parameters like adherend surface preparation, material properties, joint design, joint configuration, failure modes, and effect of FRP pins, etc. are discuss in detail. In recent years, numerous works have been reported on emerging joining techniques to increase the joint and fatigue strength through Hybrid Bonded Fastening (HBF) joint, Hybrid Bonded Bolted (HBB) joint, Hybrid Bonded Pinned (HBP) joint, FRP pinned joint and mixed adhesive joints. An innovated special device designed and developed for the purpose of mixed adhesive joint manufacturing and different parts of adhesive dispenser are described. Furthermore, the parametric study is conducted to review the effect of stress distribution and load sharing between the joints.