Influence of root curvature on the fracture energy of adhesive layers

Previously performed experiments to study the mode I behavior of an adhesive layer revealed an apparent increase in the fracture toughness when the adherends deformed plastically. Attempts to simulate the experiments are made; both with elastically and plastically deforming adherends. Thus, effects of the size of the process zone and the deformation of the adherends are revealed. The adhesive layer is modeled using finite elements with different approaches; cohesive elements and representative volume elements. The adherends are modeled with solid elements. With a long process zone, all models give good results as compared to the experiments. However, only the model with representative volume elements gives good agreement for large root curvatures and correspondingly short process zones. The results are interpreted by analyzing the deformation and mechanisms of crack propagation in the representative volume elements. It is shown that with large root curvature of the adherends, the in-plane stretching of the adhesive layer gives a substantial contribution to the fracture energy. A simple formula is derived and shown to give an accurate prediction of the effects of the root curvature. This result indicates the limits of conventional cohesive zone modeling of an adhesive layer of finite thickness.