Environmental effects on methacrylate adhesive

In recent years, bonding techniques have been widely used to assist or even replace traditional joining techniques, such as welding and riveting. This study investigates how environmental conditions affect the mechanical behaviour of bonded joints. Analyses were carried out on single lap shear joints bonded by a two-component methacrylate-based flexible structural adhesive, extensively used in marine applications. The degradation of bonded joints in marine environment is mainly due to humidity and seawater-induced corrosion. Thus, the bonded samples were prepared for test by ageing in a climatic chamber with no applied stress (at controlled temperature and humidity) and immersion-drying cycles in a saline solution (seawater-like effect). Afterwards, tensile stress tests were performed. In order to evaluate the environment-induced degradation of the tested joints, the tensile strength of aged samples was compared with that of similar un-aged joints.