Composite Adhesive-Bonded Joint Reinforcement by Incorporation of Nano-Alumina Particles

Adhesive bonding technology is being used in a variety of modern industries, including the automotive, aerospace, maritime, construction, defense and so on. On the other side, polymeric nano - composites attracted both academic and industrial interests in the past decades. The scope of this paper is experimental investigation on the effects of the addition of Alpha-alumina nanoparticles to the woven glass / epoxy composite and Araldite 2015 adhesive on the mechanical properties of the composite adhesive bonded joints. In this study, vacuum assisted resin transfer molding was used to fabricate experimental samples and to fabricate composite samples, 6 glass-fiber layers with a surface density of 200 g/m2 were used. The study of the influences of the addition of Alpha-alumina nanoparticles with different weight ratios to glass/epoxy composites suggests that the maximum values of the ultimate strength, elongation, toughness, and Young’s modulus belong to the samples with the weight ratios of 0.43, 1, 1, and 2.1%, respectively. The experimental results from the shear tensile test show that the incorporation of 0.74 wt% of nanoparticles to the adhesive increases the joint strength by about 14%.