Radiation effects on aluminum-epoxy adhesive joints

✍ Scribed by H. W. Bonin; V. T. Bui; H. Pak; E. Poirier; H. Harris

• Book ID: 101250082
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 280 KB
• Volume: 67
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-8995
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4628(19980103)67:1<37::aid-app5>3.0.co;2-p

✦ Synopsis

Two epoxy adhesive types, Cole-Parmer and Devcon, were used for preparing aluminum-epoxy bondings. The adherend surfaces, of 30 mm in diameter, were prepared using grits of 120, 240, and 320 followed by a final grit of 400, according to the ASTM D897 standard. The curing was set at 72 h at room temperature. The samples were submitted to irradiation for different times in the pool of a SLOWPOKE-2 reactor which produced thermal neutrons, fast neutrons, and g rays. The tensile properties of nonirradiated and irradiated samples were obtained with an Instron Tester, model 4206. The failure stress, about 11 MPa for nonirradiated samples, had a large decrease after a short period of irradiation and then constantly increased for longer irradiation periods. This may be explained by a predominant effect of crosslinking over chain scissions for higher irradiation doses. The density data and tensile properties of the bulk cured epoxy (Devcon) also supported the above findings. The presence of water on the bonding joints had an effect of exaggerating the irradiation effects on the strength of joints. The use of the adhesive failure modes to group the results into subgroups has permitted the reduction of the spread of the results from the tensile tests.