Surface Preparation and Activation Only by Abrasion and Its Effect on Adhesion Strength

Adhesive joints have many advantages such as weight savings, corrosion and fatigue resistance and now developed even withstand of high impact and dynamic loads. However, an adhesion has cumbersome and complicated surface preparation processes. The surface preparation step is critical in adhesive joint manufacturing in order to obtain the prescribed strength for adhesive joints. In this study, it was attempted to simplify and reduce the number of surface preparation steps, and abrasion and rapid adhesive application (ARAA) process is developed for an alternative solution. The abrasion processes are performed only for creating surface roughness in standard procedures (SP), although the abrasion processes cause surface activation itself. The results showed that there is no need the long procedures in laboratory or chemical agents for adhesion. After the abrasion process, the attracted and highly reactive fresh surface layer obtained, and its effect on bonding success is observed and analyzed in this research, in light of the essential physic and adhesion theories. Al 6061 aluminum adherends and epoxy-based adhesives were chosen for bonding processes, which is mostly used in light vehicle parts. The adherends were cleaned, treated and activated only with abrasion, and after the adhesive application the specimens were tested under quasi-static loading. The satisfied ARAA results were compared with that of the specimens fabricated by the standard procedure (SP) of adhesion processes of high impact loads.