Mixed mode loading fracture toughness of Arcan adhesive joint: Effect of surface

roughness
P. Gurubaran, M. Afendi, Nanthini Kanasan, I. Haftirman, Md. Tasyrif, and K. S. Basaruddin

Citation: AIP Conference Proceedings 1775, 030038 (2016); doi: 10.1063/1.4965158

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4965158
View Table of Contents: http://aip.scitation.org/toc/apc/1775/1
Published by the American Institute of Physics
 Mixed Mode Loading Fracture Toughness of Arcan
Adhesive Joint: Effect of Surface Roughness
Gurubaran, P.1,a), Afendi, M.1,b), NanthiniKanasan 2), Haftirman, I.1), Md, Tasyrif 1)
and K.S, Basaruddin1)
1
School of Mechatronic Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Pauh Putra Campus,
Arau, Perlis, Malaysia.
2
Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia.
a)
Corresponding author: gurubaranpanerselvan@gmail.com
b)
afendirojan@unimap.edu.my

Abstract. The paper investigates the effect of surface roughness on mixed mode loading fracture toughness of Arcan
adhesive joint. The problem of crack within the adhesive joint is a great importance to various industrial applications and
fracture toughness is an important parameter to determine the strength of adhesive joints by using various adherend
roughness. The study of fracture toughness was performed by using two varieties of modified Arcan specimens such as
coated and normal. The modified Arcan jig and it specimen was made for Mixed Mode fracture test of adhesive bonded
joint and are capable to determine the perfect range of fracture toughness under pure Mode I, Mode II and Mixed Mode
loading condition. Furthermore, it is also used to analyse the crack propagation and effects of adherend with crack length
of 5mm with adhesive thickness of 6mm. The Araldite (Huntsman) adhesive ratio 1:1 (Part by weight) was used to
bonded specimen in special fixture, in which by varying the loading angle of 0°, 45° and 90. The modified Arcan jig is
used to determine the maximum load can withstand by adhesive bonded joint and stress intensity factor for various
loadings. With the trial outcomes, it can be noted that normal modified Arcan specimen has higher Stress Intensity Factor
with adhesive joint at Shearing Mode (90°) and fracture toughness larger than the opening Mode (0°) of fracture
toughness if compare to coated modified Arcan specimen. From the field, the cracked specimen is weaker in tensile
loading condition and tougher in shear loading condition. With a high surface roughness of adherend, good bonding
strength of adhesive joint was obtained.

INTRODUCTION
Adhesive bonding technology is nowadays well established and utilized around the world. Adhesive joining can
offer substantial advantages over traditional joining methods such as welding and mechanical fastening on structural
applications [1]. In that respect there are various significant applications in automotive and aerospace industries
which have been utilized adhesive bonding technology. The technology already updated extensively in the aerospace
application for high potency and also stiffness for weight ratio applications. Aside from that, by using adhesive
bonding technology it enables to joint different types of fabric together with aspects of sizes and geometry.
Traditionally, the strength performance of adhesive was tested through lap-shear tests, pin-collar tests, and etc. [1].
Fracture mechanics (FM) were developed in several decades before as a design tool in many industries. The FM
based design approach consists of the prediction on evolution of flaws under various conditions [1]. The main
reason use of adhesive joint technology in structure for bonding is due to its constant stress along the joint.
In current engineering applications, the mechanical resistance of adhesive is best exploited by minimizing the
cleavage and by peel stress components. Therefore, the design effort is directed to selection of joint configurations in
which the peeling stresses are minimized and the shear stress dominates [1]. In addition, adhesive joint is strong,
non-geometrical shape, light weight and non-corrosive. The modified Arcan specimen is widely used to determine
the mixed mode crack growth testing. This type of modified Arcan specimen developed in an effort for create a
uniform bi-dimensional stress field [2]. One of the advantages of using adhesive joint is that fatigue life is greater

International Conference on Mathematics, Engineering and Industrial Applications 2016 (ICoMEIA2016)

AIP Conf. Proc. 1775, 030038-1–030038-8; doi: 10.1063/1.4965158
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1433-4/$30.00

030038-1
than the ordinary joining method. This adhesive joint by chemical causing the parts joined through specimen
adherend and strength of the adhesive called as cohesion. The use of bolted joint or riveted can reduce the strength
of composite structure due to high stress concentration and can lead to damage near holes [3]. On top of that,
adhesive enables joining of dissimilar materials and in general will lead to significant weight saving [4]. Modified
Arcan jig in Figure 1 is widely used for mixed-mode crack growth experiment or testing. The modified Arcan jig
testing specimen is usually in butterfly shape and it's called as modified Arcan specimen as shown in Figure 2.

FIGURE 1.Diagram of modified Arcan jig [2]. FIGURE 2.Modified Arcan specimen “butterfly” shape [2].

FRACTURE TOUGHNESS OF MODIFIED ARCAN WITH MIXED MODE LOADING

ANGLE CONDITION
The study using modified Arcan was conducted previously by many researchers in variation of specimen and
loadings. Most researchers use a butterfly shape specimen due to a uniform bi-dimensional stress field, but some
choose square one. This study is important to ensure the understanding the effects of mounting configuration and its
kinematics. The stress intensity factor (SIF) can be calculated at crack tip for modified Arcan specimen by
implement Equation 1 and Equation 2 [7 and 9]. KI is Mode I or opening Mode stress intensity factor and KII is
Mode II or shearing Mode stress intensity factor where, Pc is critical load at fracture, w is specimen length, t is the
specimen thickness and a is the crack length. The f1(a/ w) and f2(a/ w) geometrical factor for mode I and mode II are
obtained through finite elements analysis (FEA) for modified version of Arcan test specimen [5, 7, 8, and 9].
Besides that, the load level mainly depends on the geometry of Arcan specimen which include width, crack length,
thickness, and etc. [5]. The fracture toughness can be determined by using theory of non-dimensional stress intensity
factor and implementing it to calculate the numerical value for Arcan specimen [6].

(1)

(2)

030038-2
 EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES

Material and Specimen

Modified Arcan jig and its specimen were made from mild steel (A36) as shown in Figure 3 (a). The reason the
authors prefer mild steel are due to its high mechanical properties compared to other common types of material. The
modified Arcan specimen were coated with hot-dip Galvanizing method accordance to ASTM A123 Standard [10].
In Figure 3 (b), shows the specimen which done coating with hot-dip Galvanizing method. This method are involved
with steps of cleaning and pickling operations that free the surface of dirt, grease, rust and scale. In addition, the
preflux step serves to dissolve any oxide that may have formed on the iron or steel surface after pickling and
prevents rust from forming. The clean oxide-free work is galvanized by immersion techniques into molten zinc and
done the finishing operations which include quenching, removing excess zinc and inspection. During the process, a
multiple layered structure of steel-zinc alloys is formed between the inner surface of the zinc coating and the steel.
These middle layers tend to be hard and brittle behavior. Besides that, in Figure 3 (c) shows the normal modified
Arcan specimen with pure mild steel without any coating.

(a) (b) (c) (d)

FIGURE 3. (a) Modified Arcan jig, (b) Modified Arcan specimen (coated) with hot-dip Galvanized (Ra = 0.5815μm), (c)
Modified Arcan specimen without coated (normal) with (Ra = 2.1835μm), (d) Modified Arcan specimen was introduced crack
5mm length with non-adhering film(Teflon).

Modified Arcan specimen adherend was cleaned with Acetone (99.5% alcohol) and introduced starter crack on
the specimen adherend with non-adhering film (Teflon film with 0.076 mm thickness) as shown in Figure 3 (d). A
special feature jig was made from non-adhering material (Teflon) and it’s mainly used for maintain 6mm thickness
of adhesive between specimens are shown in Figure 4 (a). For this study, the mixing ratio 1:1 (part by weight) was
used to prepared adhesive. The modified Arcan specimen bonding was carried out with a jig as shown in Figure 4
(a) and stirred Araldite adhesive was poured on 6mm*30mm*10 mm space. This bonding method was repeated to
the remaining modified Arcan specimens and ensure that the space fulfilled with adhesive. At last, modified Arcan
specimen was removed from the bonding jig after adhesive cured well for 18 hours as shown in Figure 4 (b).

6mm

(a) (b)
FIGURE 4. (a) Modified Arcan specimen placed on jig for bonding process, (b) Modified Arcan specimen ready for testing.

030038-3
 Test Method and Setup
The modified Arcan specimen was bonded with Araldite adhesive by thickness of 6mm and introducing crack
length of 5mm, and was mount to modified Arcan jig with the installation of bolt and nut. The modified Arcan jig
pinned in house universal tensile machine (UTM) to conduct mode I, mode II and mixed mode tensile test with the
application of load P and by varying the load angle as 0°, 45° and 90° as shown in Figure 5 (a). The constant
displacement rate 1mm/min for controlling fracture test and the obtained results must be valid and reliable. The
modified Arcan specimen adherend surface roughness, Ra was determined by the surface roughness tester. The
surface roughness test was conducted for coated and normal, modified Arcan specimen and this testing was run with
0.1mm/s constant speed at adherend for a length of 16mm as shown in Figure 5 (b). At last, all data was recorded
and compiled. The loading in each angle was repeated 3 times to reduce the errors and the average value was
counted as final critical load, Pc.

(a) (b)
FIGURE 5. (a) Overview loading test setup: (0°) Mode I, (45°) Mixed Mode, and (90°) Mode II, (b) Adherend surface
roughness test with tester.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The tensile test was conducted for normal specimen and coated specimen, both types of specimen with
different adherend in surface roughness. The crack length, a = 5mm at modified Arcan specimen with specimen
thickness, w = 30mm. Apart from this, tensile test was conducted for mode I, mode II, and mixed mode with 18 set
of modified Arcan specimens. The stress intensity factor was determined at fracture KI and KII using Equation 1 and
Equation 2, respectively. In this study, the (a/w) value for the modified Arcan specimen is 0.17. The non-
dimensional stress factor, i.e. geometrical factor f1 and f2 was determined by using least square fitting method on
FEA result and calculated by using Equation 3 and Equation 4, respectively [9].

fI(a/w)a=0° = - 46.629(a/w)4 + 122.6(a/w)3 – 99.632(a/w)2 + 33.767(a/w) - 3.701 (3)

fII(a/w)a=90° = 45.822(a/w)4 - 90.463(a/w)3 + 65.834(a/w)2 - 20.617(a/w) + 2.645 (4)

Non-dimensional Stress Intensity Factor along the Interface Crack Length.

In Figure 6 (a) and Figure 6 (b) shows non-dimensional Stress Intensity Factors along the crack length of
specimen adherend for Mode I and Mode II, respectively. Non-dimensional Stress Intensity Factor function vs. the
ratio of the crack length to width (a/w) for loading angle 0°, 45° and 90° was plotted. In case of mode I, the non-
dimensional Stress Intensity Factor was increased drastically as the crack length at (a/w) > 0.5 for loading angle 0°
and 45°. For mode II, loading angle 90° and 45° was increased gradually and 0° angle remains unchanged. From the
observation, it can be concluded adhesive joint can resist fracture in Mode II better than Mode I.

030038-4
 (a) (b)
FIGURE 6. (a) Non-dimensional Stress Intensity Factor function (f) vs. the ratio of the crack length to width (a/w) for mode I,
(b) Non-dimensional Stress Intensity Factor function vs. the ratio of the crack length to width (a/w) for mode II.

Coated and Normal Modified Arcan Specimen Fracture Load.

Based on the results in Figure 7 (a) and 7 (b), the maximum fracture load for loading angles 90° showed highest
value whereby, for loading angle 0° the lowest load was obtained if compared to loading angle 45° and 90°. The
average load value was counted as critical load, Pc and was used to determine Stress Intensity Factor as shown in
Table 1.

(a) (b)

FIGURE 7. (a) Average maximum load vs. loading angle for 0°, 45° and 90° (coated) modified Arcan specimen with crack
interface at 5mm, (b) Average maximum load vs. loading angle for 0°, 45° and 90° (normal) modified Arcan specimen with crack
interface at 5mm.

030038-5
 TABLE 1. Average Stress Intensity Factor for coated and normal adherend with crack length of 5mm.

MPa.m (1/2) 0° 45° 90°

M

KI 0.2815 0.1726 0
Coated specimen
K II 0 0.0981 0.2460
KI 0.3859 0.3276 0
Normal specimen
K II 0 0.1862 0.2868

Fracture Toughness for Modified Arcan Specimen

The load-displacement curves were generated by the tensile machine to determine average maximum load and
displacement. In the Figure 8 (a), shows result for average maximum loading vs. loading angle 0°, 90° and 45°. The
average values of maximum load is used to determine fracture toughness of modified Arcan specimen. The loading
angle is accounted for determining the average maximum load, and the highest average maximum load 1.2167 kN
was obtained for normal modified Arcan specimen at loading angle 90° with crack interface at 5mm. On the other
hand, the highest average maximum load was found for coated modified Arcan specimen at 1.0448 kN, similarly at
loading angle 90° with crack interface at 5mm. Referring to the result in Figure 8 (a), it can be observed that for
loading angle 0° obtained lowest fracture load if compared to 45° and 90°. From this result, it can be conclude that
the shearing mode more withstand fracture load compared to opening mode. The presented result in Figure 8 (a) has
consistent with findings in literature [5, 6, 7, and 9]. In Figure 8 (b), it revealed that the fracture toughness
measurement for the modified Arcan specimen under pure mode I loading shows the average toughness of KI =
0.2815 MPa.m1/2 for coated adherend and KI = 0.386 MPa.m1/2 for normal adherend. While, for pure mode II the
average fracture toughness for coated adherend are KII = 0.2462 MPa.m1/2 and for normal adherend are KII = 0.2868
MPa.m1/2. The conclusion was made that adhesive joint can resist fracture in Mode II better than Mode I and this
condition occurs due to different adherend roughness between coated and normal modified Arcan specimen. The
normal modified Arcan specimen adherend surface roughness, Ra 2.1835μm are higher than coated modified Arcan
specimen, Ra 0.5815μm. Based on this results, the authors conclude that with a high surface roughness of specimen
adherend, good bonding strength of adhesive joint can be obtained. The normal modified Arcan specimen has higher
stress intensity factor with adhesive joint at Shearing Mode (90°) and the fracture toughness larger than the opening
Mode (0°). The study revealed that, cracked specimen is weaker in tensile loading condition and tougher in shear
loading condition. The presented result in Figure 8 (b) has consistent with findings in literature [1, 5, and 9]. In
summation, the Figure 9 (a) and Figure 9 (b) shows the types of failure on adhesive and the specimen adherend after
conduct tensile test loading angle 0°, 45° and 90°. Based on observation in Figure 8 (a), variation of loading angles
and surface roughness of the specimen adherend play a major role in Arcan adhesive bonding strength.

030038-6
 (a) (b)
FIGURE 8. (a) Average maximum load for coated and normal modified Arcan specimen for loading angle 0°, 45° and 90° with
crack length of 5mm, (b) KI vs. KII Fracture envelope values under Mode I, Mode II and Mixed Mode loadings with crack length
of 5mm.

(a) (b)
FIGURE 9. (a) Normal modified Arcan specimen with surface roughness, R a 2.1835μm cohesive failure at crack adherend, (b)
modified Arcan specimen interface failure at crack adherend.

CONCLUSION
Tensile test results from both coated and normal modified Arcan specimen was successfully obtained. The
objectives of this research were successfully achieved. Apart from that, the adhesive thickness of 6mm with crack
interface of 5mm successfully applied evenly with the help of Modified Arcan specimen bonding jig. The entire
experimental setup was developed through literature where it has been used as a guideline throughout this research.
Fracture toughness of Arcan adhesive joint under Mode I, Mode II and mixed mode loading was investigated by the
relationship between KI and KII in this study. The fabricated modified Arcan jig was used to conduct the fracture
test. From the overall results, the average maximum load was higher under in-plane shear or transverse direction
(90°) for normal modified Arcan specimen with crack length of 5mm. The result indicated that the modified Arcan
specimen with Araldite (Huntsman) adhesive has a higher fracture resistance in shear loading (90°) condition as the
adherend becomes stiffer. The normal modified Arcan specimen with high surface roughness of adherend lead to
good in strength of adhesive joints. Therefore, it can be concluded that with high surface roughness of adherend,
good bonding strength of adhesive joint can be obtained.

030038-7
 REFERENCES
1. A. Pirondi and G. Nicoletto, International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives 22, (2002).
2. J. Greer, S. Galyon Dorman and M. Hammond, Engineering Fracture Mechanics 78, (2011).
3. J.Y Corgnard, L. Sohier and P. Davies, Applied Science and Manufacturing 42, (2011).
4. G. Bresson, J. Jumel, M. Shanahan and P. Serin, International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives 35,
(2012).
5. X. Shi, X. Zhang and J. Pang, International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives 26, (2006).
6. M. Nikbakht, and N. Choupani, waset.org 2, (2008).
7. N. Choupani, International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives 28, (2008).
8. K. Prakash, K. Basaruddin, M. Rojan and H. Idrus, AMM 786, (2015).
9. N. Choupani, Engineering Fracture Mechanics 75, (2008).
10. A123/A123M - 13, ASTM International, (2013).

030038-8