The Effect of Contamination-Generated Defects on the Mechanical Performance of Adhesively Bonded Joints; Destructive and Non-Destructive Assessment

Effective use of adhesive bonding in primary structural members is limited, due to the inherent limited strength of these bonds, difficulties in inspecting bondline quality, as well as the sensitivity of bondline integrity to environmental attack and physicochemical state of the substrates bondline; the latter may result in the formation of weak bonds, non-detectable by means of conventional NDT. The present article aims to contribute to the understanding of the effect of weak bonds on the mechanical performance of adhesively bonded joints of aircraft structures, and assess the suitability of novel NDT methods to detect such defects.