Influence of voids on thick DCB joint behavior

Abstract

In this work, the influence of void content on the fracture behavior of thick double cantilever beam (DCB) joints was investigated. Three sets of thick DCB joints with optimized grooved geometry and different void contents were prepared with glass fiber epoxy composite adherends and a two-component toughened epoxy adhesive (SikaPower®-830) designed for wind turbine blade manufacturing. The thickness of the adhesive layer was 10 mm. The test was conducted with an MTS Landmark servo-hydraulic testing machine, calibrated to 5 kN load capacity. The test speed was 0.24 mm/min, Digital Image Correlation was used to monitor the crack propagation