International Journal of Adhesion & Adhesives 21 (2001) 435443

Understanding and control of adhesive crack propagation in bonded joints between carbon bre composite adherends I. Experimental
K.D. Potter*, F.J. Guild, H.J. Harvey, M.R. Wisnom, R.D. Adams
Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, University of Bristol, Queens Building, University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK Accepted 29 March 2001

Abstract Carbon bre composites are being widely considered for many classes of heavily loaded components. A common feature of such components is the need to introduce local or global loads into the composite structure. The use of adhesive bonding rather than mechanical fasteners oers the potential for reduced weight and cost. However, such bonded joints must be shown to behave in a predictable and reliable way. A major aspect of this is to demonstrate that the progress of cracks through the bonds is well understood. The work presented here illustrates one possibility for establishing a measure of control over that crack propagation. r 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: B. Composites; D. Fatigue

1. Introduction Whilst it has been demonstrated that adhesive bonds between composite structure can carry substantial loads [1,2] there is a reluctance to use such bonded structures in critical applications. Before such structures become more widely accepted, it is necessary to show that the processes by which failure is initiated and propagated are well understood and give rise to failure mechanisms that are progressive rather than catastrophic. Critical structures, which might, for example, include major elements of airframes or long span bridges, must be amenable to in-service inspection to ensure that their condition is satisfactory. For a bonded structure, this might be taken to mean that if a joint is inspected by NDT methods and found not to contain a crack or other defect, then no crack can initiate and propagate to failure within the next inspection interval. In principle, it should be assumed that a defect of size equal to the minimum observable defect will be present after NDT

*Corresponding author. Tel: +44-0117-928-9155; fax: +44-0117927-2771. E-mail address: k.potter@bris.ac.uk (K.D. Potter).

and that this should not propagate to failure within the inspection interval. One approach to ensuring reliability in bonded joints between metallic adherends is to ensure that the overlap length is substantially higher than that required to carry the load across the joint. This has the eect of greatly de-stressing the mid-section of the joint [3], and to a very large extent, ensures that cracking initiates at the end of the joint and may propagate along the joint for some substantial distance before reaching criticality [4]. For high toughness adhesive systems, the propagation rate can be suciently low that critical structures may be safely assigned an inspection and maintenance schedule. For composite materials, the situation is somewhat dierent. This is due to the anisotropy inherent in laminated composites. Even for a quasi-isotropic laminate, the in-plane and through-thickness strengths are very dierent. With poorly designed joints between composites, the initial failure may be by throughthickness tensile failure of the laminate rather than by crack initiation in the adhesive [5]. The interlaminar fracture toughness of most carbon bre laminates is substantially lower than that of typical structural adhesives. It is also very sensitive to material quality and can be sensitive to the operating environment [6].

0143-7496/01/$ - see front matter r 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 4 3 - 7 4 9 6 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 2 0 - 3

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Therefore, if failure initiation is by transverse tension failure of the composite adherends, subsequent crack propagation tends to be very rapid and essentially uncontrollable. Equally, even if the crack initiation is cohesive within the adhesive, a relatively minor growth of that crack (in terms of a percentage of the overlap length) can result in a change in failure mode from cohesive in the adhesive to interlaminar in the composite [7]. If interlaminar failure occurs, it is unlikely that an adequate safety margin could be achieved by extending the joint overlap length. This will be the case whether interlaminar failure is due to initiation in the composite or to propagation of a crack in the adhesive. The elements of joint design that minimise through thickness stresses in the composite adherends are well known [5]. The use of an adhesive llet at the ends of the overlap length greatly reduces the level of throughthickness stresses. The use of a reverse taper at the end of the adherends reduces this stress even further and joints designed in this way can give a reliably cohesive failure initiation. Even with well-designed joints, the quality of the laminate is important, as voidage and similar defects will greatly reduce the strength available in the through-thickness direction [8]. Ideally, mechanisms that seek to control the cracking in adhesivebonded joints between composite adherends should be tuneable so that propagating cracks can be maintained within the bond line even if the laminate throughthickness strength is low. In principle, if the growing crack can be maintained within the bondline, the possibility exists for developing crack-arrest mechanisms to limit crack growth. The work reported concentrates on developing an understanding of the crack initiation and propagation phases and on preventing crack propagation from the adhesive into the laminate. This has been done by a combination of detailed nite element analysis (FEA) simulations of growing cracks in joints and by an experimental programme to dene methods of crack-growth control. This paper discusses the experimental programme and a companion paper discusses the analytical programme [9].

element of judgement was, of course, necessary to rank the concepts, but in most cases, working on a simple three-step basis gave unambiguous results. When the matrix was lled in for each concept, the total scores could be assembled. This was done in ve ways. The basic, unweighted score gave a baseline. Additional scores were produced based on weighting by likely eectiveness, by cost and by the other issues. Lastly, input from BAE Systems Ltd. was used to give a weighting scheme considered to be appropriate in an aerospace environment. The use of a range of weighting schemes was intended to separate out those concepts having the most robust potential performance, rather than those that had major aws in one area. The 14 concepts considered are very briey outlined below. No details are given here about how the specic concepts that were not selected for further study might be implemented. The concepts fall into two main categories, those that modify the laminate response and those concepts that modify the adhesive response. Some of the concepts were intended to be applied at the moulding stage and some at the post-moulding or bonding stages. The selection matrix proved to be quite robust in that the high-ranking concepts tended to do well irrespective of the weighting used, although the absolute position did vary with the weighting scheme.

2. Selection of crack-growth control concepts. Prior to attempting to dene crack growth control concepts, a selection matrix was drawn up to permit evaluation of the concepts. This consisted of 17 criteria. These fell into three categories: the likely eectiveness under a variety of scenarios; the likely eects on costs, including changes in scrap and rework rates; other issues such as certication and NDT/inspection. Each concept was marked against these criteria on a poor, moderate or good basis (scoring 1,2 or 3) with the highest aggregate score considered to be the best outcome. An

1. High toughness polymeric lm co-cured at composite surface. 2. High toughness polymeric lm co-cured one ply below composite surface. 3. High toughness polymeric lm post-bonded at surface and cured prior to application of main adhesive. 4. High toughness polymeric lm applied as a component of the adhesive bond line. 5. Resin layer toughened by the addition of a suitable discontinuous phase, such as rubber or thermoplastic particles, co-cured at composite surface. 6. Resin layer toughened by the addition of a suitable discontinuous phase, such as rubber or thermoplastic particles, co-cured one ply below composite surface. 7. Resin layer toughened by the addition of a suitable discontinuous phase, such as rubber or thermoplastic particles, post-bonded at surface and cured prior to application of main adhesive. 8. Resin layer toughened by the addition of a suitable discontinuous phase, such as rubber or thermoplastic particles, applied as a component of the adhesive bond line. 9. 3D woven top plies used over all the area to be bonded. 10. Aramid cloth ply used over all the area to be bonded (or more generally, a reinforcement of modulated

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11. 12.

13. 14.

adhesion) so that sharp transverse cracks become blunted by widespread bre debonding or diverted. Through-thickness stitching of prepreg prior to cure over all the area to be bonded. Z pinning (thin, metal or composite pins inserted in the through-thickness direction) applied to the prepreg prior to cure over all the area to be bonded. Z pinning of the fully cured laminate over all the area to be bonded. Z pinning of the assembled joint over all the area that has been bonded.

The highest rankings were achieved by approaches based on the use of a co-cured porous/discontinuous layer either at the surface or below the rst ply. The use of a high toughness polymeric lm one ply below the surface and the use of a surface layer of 3D woven material also scored highly. Stitching through the prepreg before cure in the bond area was also seen to have merit. Other concepts generally either had poor marks overall or were held back by a poor result in one area. The most favoured concepts primarily focused on increasing the resistance to delamination in the composite, essentially improving its through-thickness performance. Whilst this has an obvious attraction, it was felt that there may be occasions, for example, in a repair situation, where bonding would have to be carried out without any opportunity to modify the laminate. Equally, some low-cost manufacturing approaches such as lament winding or pultrusion do not lend themselves easily to the local insertion of additional materials. For these reasons, the concepts based on laminate modication were not investigated further. The selected concept for modication of the crack propagation properties in the bond line was the introduction of a discontinuous layer into the bond line such that a growing crack would be diverted by that layer and prevented from entering

the laminate, i.e. elements of concepts 8 and 10 in the above list. There are a great many factors that would be relevant in choosing such a layer for practical application. These might include the service temperature and stability across the service temperature range, insensitivity to operational environments, ease of incorporation into the bond line, etc. However, for the work reported here, these considerations were put to one side, and a selection of layers for rst trials was made on the basis of ready availability and the desire to cover a range of options. The materials selected were powders of nylon-12 (25 30 mm diameter), nylon-6 (1520 mm diameter), PTFE powder (20 mm diameter); a ne mesh of monolament nylon-6.6 (wire diameter 39 mm nominal aperture 50 mm, weight/unit area 1.8 gm@2) and a coarser multilament scrubbed woven nylon cloth of 60 gm@2). In addition, it was decided to include a continuous lm for comparison with the discontinuous options. This was a 50 mm. thick Kaptont (DuPont thermoplastic polyimide). Kaptont has many of the properties that would be needed in a practical crack modication layer, e.g., high-Tg.

3. Joint materials, design and manufacture. The carbon bre laminate used for these tests was of unidirectional construction and was made by autoclave moulding from Hexcel 914C-TS prepreg. The adhesive used was 3 M EC3448 single part hot cure modied epoxy paste adhesive, for which a good database existed at Bristol University [1,2,10]. The selection of paste adhesive over lm adhesive was based on two major factors. First, paste adhesives can be cured without the application of pressure across the joint. This makes them preferable when bonding joints of complex geometry, or where close tolerances cannot be guaranteed. Second, paste adhesives can accommodate the incorporation of geometrical details such as reverse

Fig. 1. Schematic representation of double-lap joint made with unidirectional laminate.

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chamfers and adhesive llets at the end of joints. These features can lead to very substantial reductions in the level of induced through-thickness stresses in the laminates being joined, and help to avoid the initiation of interlaminar failure [5]. A balanced, double-lap shear design was utilised in which the inner adherends were 8 mm thick and the outer adherends were 4 mm thick. A double-lap shear design was selected rather than single-lap shear to avoid the introduction of bending stresses into the joints, and to minimise peel stresses. The overlap length was 30 mm (excluding llets) and the nished joint width was 20 mm in all cases. The bondline thickness was 0.7 mm in all cases. An external adhesive llet angle of 201 to the horizontal was used and the angle of the reverse chamfer was 301. The design of joints was as shown in Fig 1. All joints were manufactured in a jig using PTFE blocks as spacers and to form the llets. Carbon bre rods of an accurate 0.7 mm diameter were used as bondline spacers during assembly. All laminate surfaces were prepared for bonding by gritblasting to remove surface glaze and then washing with acetone. No specimens failed by a lack of adhesion between laminate and adhesive, demonstrating the adequacy of the surface preparation methods. For all the modied joints, with the exception of those modied with PTFE powder, the general manufacturing route was the same. The bottom adherend and its associated PTFE block were placed in the bonding jig. Half the required adhesive was then applied to the laminate surface. The modication layer was then added. The second half of the adhesive was then put in place as was the inner adherend. This process was then repeated with the second bond line. The two nylon powders were applied by shaking an excess of powder onto the rst layer of adhesive, then blowing away the excess to leave a very thin lm on the surface of the adhesive. The nylon cloths were simply applied by pressing them onto the rst layer of adhesive. More care had to be taken with Kaptont to avoid air entrapment under the continuous lm. Unlike the free-owing nylon powders that could be dusted onto the adhesive surface, the PTFE powder was very heavily agglomerated. To overcome this problem, it was mixed with the adhesive at 10% by volume of PTFE. This was done by deagglomerating the PTFE by mixing it with acetone,

then mixing in the adhesive and driving o the solvent. The PTFE-lled layer was then applied to both sides of the inner adherend, making the rest of the joint with the baseline adhesive. In addition to the modied joints, a number of unmodied joints were manufactured to provide a baseline for comparison. Fig. 2 shows the position of the modifying layers in the completed joints.

4. Mechanical testing of joints 4.1. Quasi-static testing of unmodied joints The joints were tested quasi-statically in an Instron servohydraulic test machine operating under displacement control. Test rate was 0.5 mm/min and failure took approximately 200 s for the strongest specimens. Four good-quality unmodied joints were tested and the results are shown below. Mean load to failure: Mean average shear stress: Coecient of variation on shear stress (sn@1): 60.09 kN 50.07 MPa 2.2%

Even though the number of replicants is small the low coecient of variation permits a reasonable condence in the mean strength. Cracking initiated from the outermost tip of the outer adherend. This crack propagated through the resin llet until it came to the inner adherend, at which point the failure propagated as a delamination through the inner adherend as shown in Fig 3. This is the required baseline failure process if the presence of the modifying layers is to inuence the progression of cracking. Two additional specimens were made up in this batch. These specimens had grossly distorted llets as shown in Fig 4. Both of these specimens failed by delamination of the inner adherend at loads 64% and 72% of the mean failure load for well-made specimens. This underlines the importance of the adhesive llet in controlling both failure load and failure mode The speed of crack propagation in these specimens made it impossible to detect whether the change in crack propagation mode for the good samples occurred as the growing crack in the adhesive contacted the inner

Fig. 2. Position of modifying layers within the bonded joints.

Fig. 3. Progression of cracking in well-made unmodied specimens.

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adherend; or whether the changes in stress eld due to the growing crack led to delamination ahead of the growing crack. 4.2. Quasi-static testing of modied joints 4.2.1. PTFE powder modied joints Three specimens were tested. These joints failed at a mean average shear stress of 21.32 MPa (43% of baseline strength). Max/Min strength range was 21.7520.74 MPa. Failure was between the PTFE lled and unlled adhesive layers. The PTFE lled layer was seen to be rather voidy and of generally poor quality. No delamination of the adherends was detected. 4.2.2. Nylon-6 and nylon-12 powder modied joints Three specimens of each type were tested. These joints failed at mean average shear strengths of 47.5 and 46.9 MPa, respectively (95% and 94% of baseline). Max/Min strength range was 51.1548.78 MPa for the nylon-6, and 48.2745.75 MPa for the nylon-12. The failure process was very similar to that of the baseline specimens in that failure appeared to initiate at the outermost corner of the outer adherend and propagate through the adhesive llet, transforming into a delamination of the inner adherend. None of the nylon-6 specimens showed any evidence of crack deection. Some evidence of crack deection was seen in the nylon12 specimens. In two specimens, the crack followed the line of the nylon powder for a very short distance of the order of 1 mm. In the third specimen, the crack followed the line of the nylon powder for a greater distance

although this distance varied across the width of the specimen (min 3 mm, max 9 mm). This evidence of crack deection suggests that the use of a particulate layer may have the potential for development into an eective crack deection technology. 4.2.3. Nylon-woven cloth and ne mesh. The joints containing the heavier nylon cloth (three specimens tested) failed at a mean average shear stress of 27.7 MPa (55% of baseline). Max/Min strength range was 31.6625.53 MPa. Failure appeared to initiate at, and propagate along, the nylon/adhesive interface. No delamination was seen in the adherends. The joints containing the ne nylon mesh (ve specimens tested) failed at a mean average shear stress of 41.7 MPa (83% of baseline). Max/Min strength range was 43.79 38.03 MPa. These joints failed in the same way as those containing the heavier nylon cloth. 4.2.4. Kaptont lm Five specimens were tested. The joints containing Kaptont lm failed at a mean average shear stress of 49.1 MPa (98% of baseline). Max/Min strength range was 50.8947.2 MPa. For all the joints tested, failure initiation was the same as that seen in unmodied joints. All the joints tested showed some evidence of crack deection by the Kaptont lm. The extent of this deection was very viable. In some cases, nal separation appeared to be as a result of propagation along the Kaptont lm/adhesive interface, whilst in others the growing crack passed through the lm and entered the laminate as a delamination. In one case, the failure was predominantly within the Kaptont lm layer itself, leaving a layer of the lm bonded to each adhesive surface. These results are summarised in Table 1. The quasi-static testing established that joints could be modied such that cracks could be prevented from entering the composite adherends. In order to study the cracking in more detail, fatigue testing was carried out on two selected variants. These were chosen as the ne nylon mesh and the Kaptont lm. The nylon mesh was chosen as it gave the most reliable performance in terms of avoiding delamination failure in the adherends,

Fig. 4. For specimens with poor quality llets, failure initiates by delamination.

Table 1 Collated results for unmodied and modied joints Modication Unmodied adhesive PTFE powder Nylon-6 powder Nylon-12 powder Nylon-woven cloth Nylon-woven mesh Kaptont lm Mean average shear stress (MPa) 50.1 21.3 47.5 46.9 27.7 41.7 49.1 Min average shear stress (MPa) 49.05 20.74 46.9 45.74 25.53 38.03 47.2 Max average shear stress (MPa) 51.21 21.75 51.15 48.75 31.66 43.79 50.89

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Fig. 5. SN curves for nylon and Kapton modied joints. Load is normalised to the mean quasi-static strength.

Fig. 6. Initiation and propagation of fatigue damage in nylon cloth modied joints.

although it appeared to initiate the failure process at a somewhat lower stress than seen in unmodied joints. The Kaptont lm was chosen as it had the potential for crack deection and maximised the joint strength.

5. Fatigue testing of modied joints. Joints were tested in tensiontension fatigue using an Instron servohydraulic fatigue testing machine at 5 Hz with an R ratio (min load/max load) of 0.1 for all specimens. At least ten specimens were tested for each sample type. A video camera was focussed on the end of the test specimen and each test was videotaped in an attempt to determine the sequence of events during the fatigue failure. Crack propagation was observed on some of the videotapes, in one case (nylon mesh modication, peak fatigue stress 60% of static mean strength) crack propagation started at about 56% of the observed lifetime, with very slow propagation below 99% of the observed lifetime. Fig. 5 presents the fatigue

data in terms of load versus log cycles to nal separation and failure. All load data has been normalised by the quasi-static strength of the relevant sample type. There is no consistent dierence between the load/log cycles (SN) relationships for the two sample types, the solid line represents the SN relationship for all the data as one merged dataset. The SN data for each sample type was tted to a linear trend line, the equations for these lines are also shown on Fig 5. The equations are almost identical for the two sample types. Also, shown in Fig 5 is a dashed line representing the linear trend line from another fatigue dataset of similar, although not identical, materials and specimen geometry. This data was obtained at Bristol University from 37 double-lap shear specimens using unidirectional T800/ 924 carbon bre laminates of 3 mm thickness for the middle adherend and 1.5 mm for the outer adherend, all adherends had reverse chamfers and a long adhesive llet was present, overlap length was 25 mm. The adhesive used and the crack initiation in these specimens was identical to that in the baseline specimens that are

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Fig. 7. Initiation and propagation of fatigue damage in nylon cloth modied joints.

the subject of this paper. The average maximum shear stress in quasi-static testing for these specimens was 46.3 MPa compared to 49 MPa for the specimens reported here. The data in the dashed line shown in Fig 5 has been normalised to the mean quasi-static strength for these specimens. As can be seen in Fig 5, the fatigue degradation for these samples is substantially steeper than for the modied samples shown here. The equation for the dashed trend line is y @0:1363x 1:0348; R2 0:951. The fatigue degradation rate for these specimens is, therefore, more than 45% greater than for the modied specimens. The dierences between the materials and joint geometries make it impossible to make any realistic claim that the modications to the joints have led to an extended fatigue life. However, the very great disparity in fatigue rates is at least suggestive that there may be an extension of the life for the modied joints. Failure for the Kaptont modied specimens was initiated in the same way as for unmodied joints, generally by initiation of a crack at the outermost tip of one of the outer adherends. These cracks then grew into the adhesive llet towards the Kaptont layer. On reaching the Kaptont layer, the cracks were generally either deected at the top surface of the Kaptont lm or passed through the lm and were deected at the lower surface of the lm, see Fig 6. The direction of propagation was generally into the parallel bondline, but in some cases was both into the bondline and out into the adhesive llet. Failure for the woven monolament nylon specimens was initiated at the nylon/adhesive interface close to the inner corner of the chamfer. See Fig 7. Separation took place along the nylon/adhesive interface, initially into the adhesive llet, after some extension the crack was deected out into the adhesive, completely separating the adhesive llet from the inner adherend. Subsequently, the separation extended back into the parallel

part of the bondline. This sequence of failure processes was also predicted by FEA [9].

6. Discussion The work reported here was focused on how adhesive bonds utilising paste adhesive between composite adherends can be modied to give a controlled failure mode in fatigue loading. To put this work into context, it is necessary to spend a little time considering the basics of adhesively bonded joints. The stress/strain distribution in the adhesive in bonded joints is heavily weighted such that the adhesive at the ends of the joints bears the greatest stress. If the adhesive exhibits a great deal of non-linearity in its stress/strain relationship prior to failure, the stress along the bondline can become more uniform. The strain will, however, still be concentrated at the ends of the joint. Failure is expected to initiate at this strain concentration. As joints get longer, the critical strain state will be reached at lower values of average shear stress in the joint. This has two eects, the rst is that the joints structural eciency is seen to decline in terms of load carried per unit of overlap length. The second is that a crack propagating in the adhesive from the point of peak adhesive strain in a long overlap joint may be able to grow for some considerable proportion of the overlap, before becoming unstable and propagating catastrophically. For the joints made and tested in this work, the average shear stress in the joints at failure in quasi-static loading is very similar to the measured shear strength of the adhesive (47.75 MPa) [11]. This indicates that the shear stresses in the undamaged joints are essentially uniformly distributed at the point of quasistatic failure, although there remains a strain concentration at the ends of the joints. In critical bonded joints between metallic adherends, it is usual to make use of the non-uniformity of stresses

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and strains in long overlaps to ensure that a long period of stable crack growth is a feature of the fatigue behaviour. [4]. This behaviour then allows for an inspection procedure to be established such that the inspection interval is a small proportion of the cracked life and cracks can be detected and repaired. The establishment of an eective inspection and repair procedure is a prerequisite for the use of such critical bonded joints. For composite adherends, growing cracks in the adhesive tend to be deected into the laminate as delaminations. These propagate much more rapidly than the cracks in the adhesive and damage the laminate as well as the joint itself. These factors make the establishment of an inspection and repair procedure much more problematical with bonded composite structures. This work was carried out to determine whether it was possible to modify bonded joints between composite adherends such that they behaved in a way analogous to the metallic case. The data reported here clearly demonstrates that it is possible to exert an element of control over the initiation and propagation of cracks in paste adhesive bondlines between composite adherends. A relatively short overlap length was used in this work to keep the loading requirements within realistic limits. Even in this case, crack growth could be detected in a proportion of samples, well before nal separation under fatigue loading. Equally, it has been shown that the crack trajectory can be controlled by the modications to the joints. Six styles of modication were tested quasi-statically. The results of these tests showed two eects. The rst was that the interface between the modifying layer and the bulk of the adhesive could act as a weak link and separate prior to the initiation of a crack at the point of peak strain in the adhesive. The second was that cracks could be initiated at the same load as observed in unmodied joints and then be deected when they reached the modifying layer. Whilst these two eects appear to be distinctly dierent they both arise from a single phenomenon, that of a weak interface in the adhesive. The dierence in apparent behaviour arises from the strength level of this interface. If the interface strength is less than the level of the stress eld imposed by the loads in the joint at the unmodied strength of the joint, then the interface

will fail at an applied load lower than the unmodied strength of the joint. If the interface is stronger, it will either fail in front of an advancing crack or remain unfailed, in which case the crack will not be deected, see Fig 8. The two nylon cloths and the use of a PTFE particulate lled layer fall into the rst group. The PTFE gave the weakest samples, followed by the heavier multilament nylon cloth, with the lighter woven monolament nylon cloth giving the strongest samples. Both types of nylon particulate lled layer and the Kaptont lm fall into the second group. Very little crack deection was seen for the nylon particulate lled layers with most cracks passing undeected through the layer. The layers were very thin and superior results may be possible with a thicker layer. The Kapton lm performed better with good crack deection in the majority of cases. It should be emphasised that the materials used in this brief study were selected as much for their ready availability as for their prospective performance. A more extensive selection process, perhaps including the manufacture of special material forms, ought to be able to ne-tune the performance of the modifying layers. Equally, no attention was paid to environmental eects on the modifying layers in this exploratory study this would have to receive some focused attention in any future work.

7. Routes to the improvement of performance of the crack deecting mechanism The mechanism of crack deection has been shown to be the presence of a weak interface or weak layer in the joint. In the ideal case, this layer is just strong enough to avoid failure initiating from the layer but becomes debonded by an approaching crack in the adhesive llet. The nylon layer is currently slightly weaker than ideal. The Kaptont layer is probably slightly too strong. The nylon cloth used in these trials was woven of monolament nylon-6.6 with a diameter of 0.039 mm and a wire to wire spacing of 0.05 mm. The adhesive penetrated between the nylon laments, such that the performance of the layer will not be exclusively dependent on the adhesion between layer and adhesive. This assumption is supported by the fact that the normalised SN curves for the two modication types are so similar. The use of a ner lament or a wider spacing should give rise to a stronger layer. Nylon is well known to be susceptible to moisture uptake and so is unlikely to be the best material for use in this way in the longer term. The use of a ner cloth woven from monolaments of an environmentally insensitive material might oer the optimum performance from this class of crack deecting approach.

Fig. 8. Mechanism of crack deection.

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Continuous layers such as the Kaptont used here can either fail at the interface between the layer and the adhesive or within the layer. Some evidence of both was seen with the Kaptont lm, but the majority of samples failed interfacially. There are a number of ways to maximise the interfacial strength of a lm bonded into an adhesive layer. However, to provide a precisely modulated level of adhesion would be extremely dicult if not impossible in practice. For this reason, any approach based on the use of a continuous lm should be focused towards lms that reliably fail within the layer rather than interfacially. In general, the nylon cloth was easier to incorporate into the bondline than the continuous Kaptont lm, and the bondline quality was consequently higher for these specimens (because air cannot be entrapped below the porous layer of nylon mesh). Taking this factor, in combination with the better performance in terms of crack deection and the greater freedom to design a crack deection layer, leads to the conclusion that the open weave cloth using monolaments is the preferred crack deection option. The laminate used in the crack deection part of this study was of high quality and would be expected to have a relatively high through-thickness strength. In this case, the strongest joints arise if the modications lead to crack deection without crack initiation at the modifying layer. For joints in which failure initiation was via delamination in the laminate (because of low material strength or high imposed peel stresses) modications would have to be based on the insertion of a layer that separated prior to the delamination failure being initiated. In this case, whilst modied joints must have lower strength than that of the unmodied joints, the advantages of avoiding failure within the laminate will still be available.

The ideal crack deection layer would either be discontinuous so that its strength would not be dominated by interfacial strength; or, if continuous, should fail within the layer rather than interfacially. Open woven meshes of monolaments appear to have the correct balance of properties to make eective crackdeecting layers. Crack deection is only an eective option for joints where failure initiates in the adhesive. Joints for which the unmodied failure mode is within the laminate could still be modied to avoid this mode by ensuring that the initial failure is at the modication layer.

Acknowledgements This work was funded by BAE SYSTEMS Airbus UK Ltd and the input of Airbus UK sta into the programme discussions is gratefully acknowledged.

References
[1] Towse A, Davies R, Clarke A, Wisnom MR, Adams RD, Potter KD. The design and analysis of high load intensity adhesively bonded double lap joints. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Deformation and Fracture of Composites, 1997. [2] Towse A, Potter KD, Wisnom MR, Adams RD. A novel comb joint concept for high strength unidirectional carbon bre bonded joints. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Composite Materials. Gold Coast, Australia, July 1997. [3] Adams RD, Comyn J, Wake WC. Structural adhesive joints in engineering. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishing, 1997. [4] ESA PSS-03-203. Structural Materials Handbook, Issue 1, Vol 1. 1994 [Chapter 21]. [5] Adams RD, Atkins RW, Harris JA, Kinloch AJ. Stress analysis and failure properties of carbon bre reinforced plastic steel double lap joints. J Adhesion 1986;20:2953. [6] Schjelderup T, Gustafson CG. The wedge test approach to mode 1 interlaminar fracture toughness for CFRP. Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Composite Materials, September 2024, 1993. p 4638. [7] Adams RD. Strength prediction for lap joints, especially with composite adherendsFa review. J Adhesion 1989;30:21942. [8] Hiel CC, Sumich M, Chappell DP. Determining a laminated composites ILTS using a curved beam test specimen. J Compos Mater 1991;25:85468. [9] F.J. Guild, K.D. Potter, J. Heinrich. R.D.Adams a M.R. Wisnom. Understanding and control of adhesive crack propagation in bonded joints between carbon bre composite adherends. Part 2: Finite element analysis. Int. J Adhesion Adhesives 2001; 21:44553. [10] Towse A, Potter KD, Wisnom MR, Adams RD. Specimen size eects in the tensile failure strain of an epoxy adhesive. J Mater Sci 1998;33(17):4307. [11] Vaughn L. Private communication, Bristol University.

8. Conclusions. It is possible to modify adhesively bonded joints between composite adherends such that failure is contained within the bond line and does not propagate into the composite laminates. The modications can either act as the site of crack initiation or can deect cracks growing within the adhesive, initiated at points of adhesive strain concentration. Preventing the propagation of adhesive cracks into the laminate avoids damage to the laminate and thus simplies repair procedures.