One-side Bonded Composite Repair of Center-cracked Aluminum Alloy Plates

Center-cracked aluminum alloy plates were adhesively one-side bonded with unidirectional carbon/epoxy composite patches by vacuum-bagging process.The static tension and fatigue properties of the cracked plates and bonded plates were measured.When the center-cracked plates are adhesively repaired,the static failure and fatigue failure tolerance of the plates have been significantly improved.The static failure strength of the repaired plates was 349.69 MPa,35.35% larger than the static failure strength 258.35 MPa of the cracked plates.The fatigue life of the bonded plates is 63 868 cycles,1.51 times longer than that of the cracked ones.The initial crack progress rate of the repaired plates is 0.16 μm/cycle,while that of the cracked plates is 0.34 μm/cycle.The critical crack length increase from 20.20 mm to 28.05 mm with composite bonding.