Abstract
In this paper, monotonic tensile and fatigue crack growth (FCG) studies were conducted on 7075-T6 Al substrates with and without bonded boron/epoxy patches. The Al substrates were machined to V-type side notch specimen. The presence of the pre-crack significantly decreased the plastic displacement and caused a slightly higher stiffness compared with the unnotched Al substrate. It was found that the repairs appeared to make the pre-cracked substrates slightly more plastic. The experimental results show that both static strength and fatigue life of the repaired aluminum substrates had been significantly increased for the bonded composite patches. The different patch-ply repairs were found to provide about a 5–14 times improvement in the fatigue life and a 2–4 times decrease in the stress intensity factor. The 4-ply-patch repaired specimen demonstrated its effectiveness in preventing static failure and increasing fatigue life of the cracked substrates. An analytical model, based on Rose's analytical solution and Paris' power law, was developed to predict FCG behavior of the repaired substrates. The analytical and experimental results are in good agreement.
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