Behaviour, modelling and simulation of structural bonding subjected to a large range of temperature, loading rate and aging – COSICO

Composite materials are extensively used in marine renewable energy systems due to their high stiffness and excellent long term behaviour. Indeed, the blades of offshore wind turbines and tidal are made of several parts. These sub-structures are then assembled using adhesively bonded solutions. However, one major problem concern the durability of these structures subjected to severe marine environment with an objective of long in-service lifetime. In order to guarantee the reliability of these systems, it is essential to develop models predicting their in-service lifetime and to help to define the time between two maintenances. To attain this goal, the purpose of this project is to use the complementary of the characterization tools and of the modeling at different scales (scale of the microstructure, scale of the adhesive and scale assembly) taking into account the effects of aging sea-water.in order to identify constitutive laws taking into account the aging for the modelling of bonded structures. The advantage of this approach applied to bonded structures is to allow a more rapid assessment of the long-term properties of EMR structures and allow a more rapid evaluation of the design and formulation of adhesives. Indeed, the classical approach consists in performing validation tests of structures in the most severe aging conditions. The approach proposed in this project is will to predict the behavior of the adhesive in the assembled structure thanks to the characterization tests at small scales coupled with accelerated aging tests.