Stress analysis of one-sided adhesively bonded composite repair of cracked metallic plate

A stress analysis model involving geometric nonlinearity and boundary conditions was developed to characterize adhesive stress distribution of adhesively bonded composite repair structures. The bending moment and the transverse deflection under tensile load were calculated. The bending moment at the ends of the overlap was required as boundary conditions of the differential equations governing the adhesive stresses. The solutions for induced adhesive peel stresses and shear stress were obtained, and the displacement along the mid-plane of the cracked plate was calculated. The finite element analysis was conducted to validate the present closed-form solutions. The numerical results indicate that the analytical solutions and their simplifications correlate very well with the nonlinear finite element computations. The present mathematical techniques and analysis approaches are critical to the successful design, analysis and implementation of bonded repairs.