Validation of Structural Adhesives in Crash Applications

Currently, the most crash relevant structures are usually joined to the main structure of the body through conventional spot-welding. The intention of this study is to investigate the potential of adhesive as an alternative or supplementary joining method to spot-welding for crash relevant applications. Box structures are chosen to represent simplified crash members and are joined using spot-welding, adhesive bonding, and weld-bonding methods for comparison. An extensive experimental test regime has been carried out to investigate the joining potential and various problems that were encountered during the tests will be discussed. Various finite element approaches for simulating adhesives are investigated using the RADIOSS FE code and validation with experimental tests will be shown.