Surface Treatments for Enhancing the Bonding Strength of Aluminum Alloy Joints

Aluminum alloy adhesive bonding joint widely appears in many industrial products. Improving the mechanical performances of aluminum alloy bonding joints has been attracting much effort. To acquire more excellent bonding strength, this paper focused on the effects of different surface treatments, including laser ablation and milling superposed by phosphoric acid anodizing (PAA). The treated surfaces were characterized by roughness and contact angle, and the effects of the geometric parameters of microstructures on wettability, failure mode, and shear strength were examined. The results indicate that those surfaces where the spacing is smaller than the diameter present a hydrophilic property and the corresponding specimens are mainly subject to cohesive failure, and vice versa. Additionally, laser ablation with a properly designed dimple pattern can greatly improve the bonding strength, and the maximum average shear strength of specimens with a thickness of 50 μm reaches 32.82 MPa, which is an increase of 28.15% compared with the original milling specimen. Moreover, fabricating groove or grid patterns on the surfaces and applying PAA treatment can also significantly enhance the bonding strength, reaching up to 36.28 MPa.