Ultrasonic Study of Environmental Damage Initiation and Evolution in Adhesive Joints

Abstract

This article reports on an experimental study of environmental degradation of adhesive joints by an ultrasonic angle-beam technique. The technique is based on measurements of the frequency response of the reflection of obliquely incident ultrasonic signals from a joint bondline. Ultrasonic measurements were performed using a special ultrasonic goniometer with only one ultrasonic transducer. By this method, the degradation of single lap adhesive joints was studied as a function of exposure in NaCl solutions at 68°C under static tensile load. It was found that joint degradation is accompanied by a shift of the ultrasonic reflection spectrum minimum to a lower frequency. Two stages of adhesive joint environmental degradation can be distinguished: a) a relatively slow adhesive joint degradation dominated by adhesive creep, and b) delamination along the adhesive/adherend interface, leading to failure. Several degradation mechanisms are found in the first stage to affect the position of the spectral minimum. The first is adhesive creep caused by normal-to-bond-plane stress concentration at the joint overlap edges. This mechanism is found to have the dominant effect on the ultrasonic signature. Second, changes of the effective density and elastic moduli of the adhesive layer also affect the spectrum of the reflected signal. The third mechanism is the degradation of the adhesive-adherend interface. In the second stage of the joint degradation process, delamination along the adhesive/adherend interface occurs and is followed by joint failure. While the time span of the first stage changes significantly from joint to joint, the time span of the second stage (failure by delamination) in our conditions is about 30–40 h. The delamination results in a significant additional spectral minimum shift to a lower frequency that can be used as an indicator of failure initiation.