EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE BOND BEHAVIOR OF CFRP-TO-STEEL JOINTS UNDER FATIGUE LOADING

This work presents an experimental and numerical investigation of the bond behavior of CFRP-to-steel interfaces under cyclic loading. The composite strip (i.e., CFRP and adhesive) experiences fatigue degradation during cyclic loading, which needs to be properly considered to model debonding failures. In this regard, a numerical approach that separately considers the fatigue behavior of the bonded interface and of the composite is proposed. Experimental results of single-lap direct shear tests are presented and employed to calibrate parameters of the numerical model. A parametric analysis is performed to investigate the effect of the main design parameters on the strengthened system performance.