Adhesive for carbon fiber tubing

[joeinthedark]

I am wondering if anyone knows of a good type of epoxy or other type of adhesive for glueing the carbon fiber tubing for out suspension to some aluminum mounting caps. The tubing is 0.82 in OD and the bond length is around 1 inch. It would be nice to have something that can hold at least 5000 lbs. Any help would be wonderful

www.mech.utah.edu/fsae (http://www.mech.utah.edu/fsae)

[joeinthedark]

I am wondering if anyone knows of a good type of epoxy or other type of adhesive for glueing the carbon fiber tubing for out suspension to some aluminum mounting caps. The tubing is 0.82 in OD and the bond length is around 1 inch. It would be nice to have something that can hold at least 5000 lbs. Any help would be wonderful

www.mech.utah.edu/fsae (http://www.mech.utah.edu/fsae)

[Foote]

Joe, I believe you are asking for a ~9500psi epoxy...I don't know of anything in that neighborhood.

We did fairly extensive testing of structural adhesives before assembling our chassis. The big question I would have for you is can you bake your a-arms? If so there are some heat cure epoxies that will take you to around 5000-6000psi, we ended up using 3m's scotch weld 2214 on many of our chassis components and are very happy with its performance. The downside is it requires a cure temperature of ~225-230F and 250F is really a better minimum.

If you can't heat your parts you're going to be limited to, as far as I have seen, weaker epoxies. we ended up using Loctite's E120HP for components that couldn't be heated, or weren't practical to heat. The loctite stuff is good for ~4000psi.

Anyways I think my answer to your original question is try to get some more bond area...

If you're interested our testing can be seen here http://dot.etec.wwu.edu/fsae/viking35adhesives.htm and uses here http://dot.etec.wwu.edu/fsae/viking35_bonding.htm

You might try contacting Rich Beck at loctite ( Rich.Beck@loctite.com tell him the WWU guys sent you). He has been extremely helpful for us, and seemed interested in hearing from other teams...

Hope this helps, and if you have any specific questions feel free to email me or any of the other contacts on our website....

Travis Garrison
WWU FSAE

[Travis Garrison]

uh yah that wasn't Foote http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif ...I forgot to log him off...


Travis

[joeinthedark]

Thanks Travis for the help

Joe
University of Utah
www.mech.utah.edu/fsae (http://www.mech.utah.edu/fsae)