Joining of aluminium foams with fasteners and adhesives

This paper describes methods of joining aluminium foams with mechanical fasteners and with adhesives, and characterises the mechanical properties of the resulting joints. Different techniques of joining were investigated under monotonic and cyclic pull-out and bearing loads. The effects of fastener geometry on pull-out and bearing-load failure are modelled. Cyclic loading reduces the maximum load a fastener can carry without failure to 0.35 of the static failure load. Epoxy adhesive joints are stronger than the foam itself in all modes of loading: failure always occurs remote from the joint. (C) 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers.