Análise comparativa da simulação estrutural de juntas adesivadas: métodos de elementos finitos, sem malha e experimental

Abstract

Mechanical joints are commonly used in various industrial sectors such as automotive, aerospace, pipeline, offshore, power plants, and railways. They are classified according to their type, characteristics, and applications, ranging from rivets and bolts to welded and adhesive joints. While rivets and bolts are economical and versatile, they can cause stress concentrations that lead to failures in brittle materials. Welded joints, on the other hand, offer high strength but may exhibit heterogeneity in their composition and welding defects, including residual stresses and misalignments of the joined parts. In this context, the use of structural adhesives in joining parts stands out for their durability under fatigue, uniform stress distribution, corrosion resistance, and lighter weight. However, validating adhesively bonded joints with complex geometries presents a significant challenge due to the limitations in performing structural simulations of large parts joined by an extremely thin element. Therefore, this work aims to evaluate the integrity of bonded structures of various complexities through simulations using Meshless Methods (MM), as well as experimental validations and a comparison of computational costs between the Finite Element Method (FEM) and MM, assessing the accuracy of these methods and the economic, temporal, and technical aspects associated with the use of MM in projects. From the obtained results, it was found that simulations performed with MM were significantly faster and had a lower usage cost compared to FEM. However, MM faces limitations in stress analysis in the adhesive edge regions, and when simulating complex structures, it showed a loss of resolution in the results due to restrictions in point cloud discretization, not achieving the accuracy of local analyses as in FEM. Thus, it is concluded that MM is not ideal for final validation in highly complex projects but can be recommended for preliminary analyses, as it is a faster and more economical alternative compared to FEM.