Title: Effect of the Surface Preparation on PP Reinforced Glass Fiber

Adhesive Lap Joints Strength

Abstract: This article is concerned with the influence of surface treatment on the
strength of single lap joints. The tensile tests were carried out in order to find the
surface treatments which maximize joint strength using polypropylene reinforced
glass fiber as adherents. The maximum shear strength was obtained with the
trichlorethylene plus primer treatment when using a cyanoacrylate adhesive. The
pretreatment effectiveness was evaluated in terms of environmental durability and
an important decrease in static strength of adhesive joints occurred when they were
immersed in water.
Introduction:
Single lap joint is the simplest to manufacture, however, this configuration
is the weakest [1]. Therefore these joints are essentially used for lightly
loaded applications. The loading eccentricity promotes a rotation of the
joint and as a result peel stresses occur. Such stresses are very important in
the failure process. In this case it is very important to minimize peel stresses,
which can be reduced by an ideal superposition length [24], tapering of the
adherents [58], adherent thickness [2,911], adhesive thickness [9,12],
adherent strength and elastic modulus [10,11,13], adhesive strength and
elastic modulus [2,14].