Experimental study on the pull-off load-bearing capacity of composite sandwich T-joints by tenon-and-mortise

Abstract In this paper, an experimental study of pull-off load-bearing capacity and damage mode was conducted for tenon-and-mortise glued T-joints of composite honeycomb sandwich structures. Five test pieces of T-joints with different tenon widths and different numbers of tenons with the same total tenon width were investigated. The results of the pull-off tests showed that the tensile failure of the gluing surface occurs first in the tenon shoulder region during loading of the T-joint, after which the tenon region takes most of the load until the shear failure of the gluing surface of the bottom plate and the web in the tenon region or the panel pulls off. For the composite honeycomb sandwich structure tenon-and-mortise glued T-joints, increasing the width of the tenon makes an important contribution to improving the pull-off load capacity of the T-joints; when the total width of the tenon is the same, the pull-off load capacity of the T-joints decreases when the number of tenons increases.