Creep behaviour of flexible adhesives

Since flexible adhesives are used more and more in structural applications, designers should have a better understanding of its behaviour under various conditions as ultimate load, fatigue load, long-term load and environmental conditions. This paper focuses on long-term load conditions and its effect on flexible adhesives. The creep properties of both PU (PolyUrethane) and SMP (Silyl Modified Polymers) adhesives used for identical applications are considered. To investigate the creep behaviour tests under various conditions were done. The results of those tests are presented and compared. To evaluate these results an empirical method is proposed and discussed. An example illustrates the potential of this method. It is also shown that with use of a probabilistic calibration technique this method results into a simple rule, which can be used to calculate the creep for practical applications. For the studied adhesives, the creep performance of the SMP adhesive is shown to be of the same level or slightly better than of the two PU adhesives. In addition to this empirical method, the principles of a more complex theoretical based method are introduced. The potential of this method is illustrated and future research activities are drawn.