The use of adhesives for fixing low-weight elements is showing increasing interest in the industry, as it would reduce the weight of the assembly, costs, and production time. Specifically, the application of pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) to join non-structural naval components to aluminium substrates has not yet been reported. In the present work, a study of the mechanical behaviour of different double-sided PSAs applied on bare aluminium alloy substrates is performed. The influence of surface roughness, surface chemical treatments, and the matrix of the adhesives is studied through different mechanical tests, such as shear, T-peel, and creep. The application of an adhesion promoter improved the mechanical behaviour. Low roughness substrates provided better performance than ground samples. Acrylic foam adhesives were subjected to creep tests, whose results were fitted to a simple mathematical model, predicting the fracture time as a function of the applied load.
Keywords: aluminium; creep testing; mechanical properties; pressure-sensitive adhesive; surface chemical treatments; surface roughness.