Effect of long-term stress aging on aluminum-BFRP hybrid adhesive joint's mechanical performance: Static and dynamic loading scenarios

Composite-aluminum hybrid adhesive joints represent an ideal solution for designing lightweight structures for the marine industry. However, seawater aging is a serious concern, limiting the safe service life of the joint. Notably, efforts to understand the impact of aging have largely focused on the short-term periods without considering actual operating conditions. Here, we report the mechanical performance of hybrid joints subjected to the long-term stress aging. Besides, we modified the epoxy adhesive with halloysite nanotubes (HNTs) to limit the aging driven adhesive degradation and improve the adhesive's rigidity. We evaluated mechanical performances of hybrid joints by performing tensile, flexural, and drop-weight impact tests. While we increased the load-carrying capacity by over 25% with the HNTs modification before the stress aging process, modified adhesive withstood almost 55% higher tensile load than the neat epoxy adhesive after six-month stress aging. The modified adhesive also absorbed 41% less impact energy, indicating the efficiency of HNTs on limiting the degradation due to the stress aging. Furthermore, the damage mode transformed from adhesion to cohesion, thanks to the improved adhesive-composite interface performance. We envisage that these exciting results will pave the way for designing robust hybrid joints for the marine industry.