Adhesive Bonding and Mechanical Fasteners

• Adhesive Bonding- Adhesive bonds to any material, needs no surface preparation, cures
rapidly, and maintains a high bond strength under all operating operations. Tremendous
advances have made, however, in the development of adhesives that are stronger, easier
to use, less costly and more reliable than alternative methods of joining.
Adhesive Materials and their Properties
• Epoxies- The thermosetting epoxies are the oldest, most common, and most diverse of
the adhesive systems and can be used to join most engineering materials including metal,
glass and ceramic.
• Cyanoacrylates- These are liquid monomers that polymerize when spread into a thin
film between two surfaces.
• Anaerobics- are one-component, thermosetting, polyester acrylics that remain liquids
when expose to air. When confined to small spaces and shut off from oxygen, as in a
joint to be bonded, the polymer becomes unstable.
• Acrylics- The acrylic-based thermoplastic adhesives are relatively new, but offer good
strength, toughness and versatility, and are able to bond a variety of materials including
plastics, metals, ceramics and composites, eve through oily or dirty surfaces.
• Urethanes- a large and diverse family of polymers that are generally targeted for
applications that involve temperatures under 150˚F (65˚C) and components that can
undergo great elongation.
• Silicones- silicone thermosets cure from the moisture in the air or adsorbed moisture
from the surfaces being joined. They formed low-strength structural joints and are usually
selected when considerable expansion and contraction is expected in the joint, flexibility
is required, or good gasket or sealing properties are necessary.
• High-temperature adhesives- When strength must be retained at temperatures over
500˚F (290˚C), high structural adhesives should be specified.
• Hot melts- While generally not considered to be true structural adhesives, the hot-melt
adhesives are being used increasingly to transmit loads, especially in composite material
assemblies.
Nonstructural and Special Adhesives
• Evaporative Adhesive- use an organic solvent or water bases, coupled with vinyls,
acrylics, phenolics polyurethanes or various types of rubbers.
• Pressure-sensitive adhesives- are usually based on various rubbers, compounded with
various additives and bond at room temperature with a brief application of pressure.
• Delayed tack adhesives- are similar to pressure-sensitive systems, but are non tacky
until activated by exposure to heat.
 • Conductive adhesives- can be produced by incorporating selected fillers such as silver,
copper or aluminum flakes or powder.
Design Considerations
• The structural adhesive have been used for a wide range of applications in fields as
diverse as automotive, aerospace, appliances biomedical, electronics, construction,
machinery, and sporting goods. Proper selection and use, however, requires consideration
of a number of factors, including:
1. What materials are being joined? What are their porosity, hardness and surface
conditions? Will thermal expansions or contractions be different?
2. How will the joined assembly be used? What of type of joint is proposed, what
will be the bond area and what will be the applied stresses? How much strength is
required? Will there be mechanical vibration or impact?
3. What temperature might be required to effect the cure, and what temperatures
might be encounter during service? Consideration should be given to highest
temperature, lowest temperature, rates of temperature change, frequency of
change, duration of exposure to extremes, the properties required at the various
conditions, and differential expansions or contractions.
4. Will there be subsequent exposure to solvents, water or humidity, fuels or oils,
light, ultraviolet radiation acid solutions, or general weathering?
5. What is the desired level of flexibility or stiffness? How much toughness is
required?
6. Over what length of time is stability desired? What portion of this time will be
under load?
7. Is appearance important?
8. How will the adhesive be applied? What equipment, labor, and skill are required?
9. What will it cost?
• Another design consideration is the type of stress to which the joint will be subjected.
Applied stresses can subject the joint to tension (or compression), shear, cleavage and
peel. Most of the structural adhesives are significantly weaker in peel and cleavage than
they are in shear or tension. Therefore, adhesively bonded joints should be designed so
that as much of the stress as possible is in shear or tension, where all of the bonded area
shares equally in bearing the load.
Advantages and Limitations
• Adhesive bonding has a number of obvious advantages. Almost any material or
combination of materials can be joined in a wide variety of sizes, shape and thickness.
For most adhesives the curing temperature are quite low. As a result, very thin materials
such as foils can be joined to each other or to heavy sections. Because of adhesives bond
the entire joint area, good load distribution and fatigue are obtained concentrations are
avoided. Adhesive are generally inexpensive and frequently weigh less than the fasteners
needed to produce strength joint. From a manufacturing viewpoints, the formation of a
joint does not require the flow of material, as in brazing and soldering. The bonding
adhesive is applied directly to the surfaces and the joint is then form by the application of
heat or pressure.
• The major disadvantages of adhesive bonding are:
• There is no universal adhesive.
• Most industrial adhesive are not stable above 350 ˚ F (180 ˚C)
• High strength adhesives are often brittle ( poor impact properties)
• Long term durability and life expectancy are difficult to predict.
• Surface preparation and cleanliness, adhesive preparation and curing can
be critical if good and consistent results are to be obtained.
• Assembly times may be greater than for alternative methods, depending
on the curing mechanism.
• It is difficult to determine the quality of an adhesive-bonded joint.
• Some adhesives contain objectionable chemicals or solvent.
• Many structural adhesive deteriorate under certain operating conditions.
• Adhesively bonded joints cannot be readily disassembled.
Mechanical Fastening
• Introduction and Methods
• A classification that includes a wide variety of techniques and fasteners designed
to suit the individual requirements of a multitude of joints and assembles.
Included within this family are integral fasteners, threaded discrete fasteners (
which includes screws, bolt, studs, inserts, and other types), non-threaded discrete
fasteners ( such as rivets, pins, retaining rings, staplers and wire stitches), special-
purpose fasteners ( such as quick release and tamper-resistant types), shrink and
expansions fits , press fit and others.
 • Integral fasteners- are formed areas of a component that interfere or interlock with other
components of the assembly and are most commonly found in sheet metal products.
Examples include lanced or shear-formed tabs, extruded hole flanges, embossed
protrusions, edge seams and crimps.
• Discrete fasteners- are separate pieces whose primary function is to join the primary
components. These include bolts, nuts, screws, nails, rivets, quick release fasteners,
staples and wire stitches.
• Shrink and expansion fits- form another major class of mechanical joining. Here a
dimensional change is introduced to one or both of the components by heating or cooling.
Reason for Selection
• Mechanical fastening offers a number of attractive features among them being:
1. Ease of disassembly and reassembly.
2. The ability to join similar or different materials in a wide variety of sizes, shapes
and joint design.
3. Low manufacturing cost
4. Installation does not adversely affect the base material
5. Little or no surface preparation or cleaning is required
Manufacturing Concern
• Many mechanical fasteners require that the components contain aligned holes. These
holes can be produced in a variety of ways, including punching, drilling, electrical or
chemical machining and laser beams. Each technique produces holes with characteristic
surface finish, dimensional features and properties. Hole making and proper positioning
and alignment of the holes are major considerations in mechanical fastening.
Design and Selection
• The design and selection of a fastening method requires numerous considerations,
including the possible means of joint failure. When a product is assembled with fastened
joints, the fasteners are extremely vulnerable sites.
• Mechanical joints generally fail because of oversight or lack of control in one of four
area: (1) The design of the fastener and the manufacturing technique used to make it. (2)
Material from which the fastener is made. (3) Joint design (4)the means and details of
installation.