Feb 26 2004
Traditional industrial fastenings like welding, bolts, and rivets, are being replaced by a range of adhesives. These engineering and structural adhesives are high strength and are designed to support large loads as well as being subject to severe environmental conditions, particularly when used in construction.
Some of the advantages of adhesives over traditional fastenings include the distribution of loading across the entire joint, excellent fatigue properties, vibration and sound management, sealing, reduced or elimination of galvanic corrosion and faster more cost-effective assembly method.
A wide choice of adhesives are available with differences like curing characteristics, one- or two-component systems, varying physical and mechanical properties, and resistance to chemicals and moisture. For construction applications the most important adhesives are anaerobics, epoxies, reactive acrylics, polyurethanes, reactive hot melt polyurethanes and cyanoacrylates. For extreme temperature applications there are also bismaleimides and polybenzimidazoles.
A new Rapra Review Report discusses the types of adhesives in use, properties, advantages and disadvantages and applications.
Source: RAPRA