An improved energy-based model for predicting the fatigue life of the
automobile sealant adhesively bonded butt-joints
- Hai Yu Li,
- Jun Zhang,
- Hao Zhong Shen,
- Xin Zhang
Abstract
The evolution of dissipation energy of the uniaxial and multiaxial
fatigue experiments on the automobile sealant adhesively bonded
butt-joints was investigated by the method of fatigue dissipation energy
analysis and fatigue failure identification. The results demonstrated
that the dissipation energy increased and the fatigue life decreased
with the increase of stress amplitude, mean stress, and the decrease of
cycle time. Meanwhile, the non-proportional loading path resulted in
greater dissipation energy and shorter fatigue life than that of
uniaxial and proportional loading path. Moreover, the existing
energy-based model using the energy dissipated in different cyclic
loading stages as the fatigue parameters was adopted to predict the
fatigue life of the automobile sealant adhesively bonded butt-joints,
respectively. The practical limitations of the prediction model using
the total dissipation energy as the fatigue parameter were evaluated.
Therefore, an improved energy-based fatigue life prediction model was
proposed which using the partial steady stage of dissipation energy
curves as the parameters. The predicted results of the improved model
and the comparison with that of the existing energy-based model
indicated that the improved model had an excellent ability to predict
the fatigue life, and was more practical in engineering application for
the automobile sealant adhesively bonded butt-joints.